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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 




DONALD HAN KEY in 



A Student 
In Arms 



SECOND SERIES 

By 

DONALD HANKEY 



& 



LONDON : ANDREW MELROSE, LTD 

3 YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 

1917 



JUN 13 1917 
©CUUtt.2960^ 



CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

Something about " A Student in 

Arms " ..... 7 

Author's Foreword ... 41 

I The Potentate .... 47 

II The Bad Side of Military Service 59 

III The Good Side of " Militarism " . 7a 

IV A Month's Experiences . . .87 
V Romance ..... 101 

VI Imaginary Conversations (I) . . 117 

VII The Fear of Death in War . . 123 

VIII Imaginary Conversations (II) . 135 

IX The Wisdom of "A Student in Arms'" 147 

X Imaginary Conversations (III) . 155 
5 



CONTENTS 



CHAP. PAGE 

XI Letter to an Army Chaplain . 163 

XII " Don't Worry " . . . .175 

XIII Imaginary Conversations (IV) . 185 

XIV Idylls of the War . . .191 
XV A Passing in June, 1915 . . 207 

XVI My Home and School : — 

223 

II School 241 

Notes on the Fragment of Auto- 
biography by " Hilda" . 263 



SOMETHING ABOUT 
«A STUDENT IN ARMS" 

By H. M. A. H. 

" His life was a Romance of the most 
noble and beautiful kind." So says one 
who has known him from childhood, 
and into how many dull, hard and narrow 
lives has he not been the first to bring the 
element of Romance ? 

He carried it about with him ; it 
breathes through his writings, and this 
inevitable expression of it gives the saying 
of one of his friends, that " it is as an artist 
that we shall miss him most," the more 
significance. 

And does not the artist as well as the 
poet live on in his works, and is not 



ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" 

the breath of inspiration that such alone 
can breathe into the dull clods of their 
generation bound to be immortal ? 

Meanwhile, his " Romance " is to be 
written, and his biographer will be one 
whose good fortune it has been to see 
much of the " Student " in Bermondsey, 
the place that was the forcing-house of 
his development. In the following pages 
it is proposed only to give an outline of 
his life, and particularly the earlier and 
therefore to the public unknown parts. 

Donald Hankey was born at Brighton 
in 1884 ; he was the seventh child of his 
parents, and was welcomed with excite- 
ment and delight by a ready-made family 
of three brothers and two sisters living 
on his arrival amongst them. He was 
the youngest of them by seven years, and 
all had their plans for his education and 
future, and waited jealously for the time 
when he should be old enough to be re- 

8 



ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" 



moved from the loving shelter of his 
mother's arms and be " brought up." 

His education did, as a matter of fact, 
begin at a very early age ; for one day, 
when he was perhaps about three years 
old, dressed in a white woolly cap and 
coat, and out for his morning walk, a 
neighbouring baby stepped across from 
his nurse's side and with one well-directed 
blow felled Donald to the ground ! 
Donald was too much astonished and 
hurt at the sheer injustice of the assault 
to dream of retaliation, but when they 
reached home and his indignant nurse 
told the story, he was taken aside by his 
brothers and made to understand that by 
his failure to resist the assault, and give 
the other fellow back as good as he gave, 
" the honour of the family " was im- 
pugned ! He was then and there put 
through a systematic course of " the noble 
art of self-defence." " And I think," 
said one of his brothers only the other 

9 



ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" 

day, " that he was prepared to act upon 
his instructions should occasion arise." 
It will be seen from this incident that his 
bringing-up was of a decidedly strenuous 
character and likely to make Donald's 
outlook on life a serious one ! 

He was naturally a peace-loving and 
philosophical little boy, very lovable and 
attractive with his large clear eyes with 
their curious distribution of colour — the 
one entirely blue and the other three 
parts a decided brown — the big head set 
proudly on the slender little body, and the 
radiant illuminating smile, that no one 
who knew him well at any time of his life 
can ever forget. It spoke of a light within, 
" that mysterious light which is of course 
not physical," as was said by one who 
met him only once, but was quick to 
note this characteristic. 

Donald's more strenuous times were in 
the boys' holidays — those tumultuous of 
seasons so well known to the members of 

10 



ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" 

all big families. His eldest brother, 
Hugh, was bent on making an all-round 
athlete of him; another brother saw in 
him an embryo county cricketer, while a 
third was most particular about his music, 
giving him lessons on the violoncello with 
clockwork regularity. The games were 
terribly thrilling and dangerous, especi- 
ally when the schoolroom was turned 
into a miniature battlefield, with opposing 
armies of tiny lead soldiers. But Donald 
never turned a hair if Hugh were present, 
even at the most terrific explosions of gun- 
powder. His confidence in Hugh was 
complete. Nor did he mind personal 
injuries. When on one occasion he was 
hurled against the sharp edge of a chair, 
cutting his head open badly, and his 
mother came to the rescue with indigna- 
tion, sympathy and bandages, whilst 
accepting the latter he deprecated the 
two former, explaining apologetically, 
" It's only because my head's so big." 

11 



ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" 

He admitted in after years to having 
felt most terribly swamped by the per- 
sonalities of two of his brothers. The 
third he had more in common with, for he 
was more peace-loving, and he seemed 
to have more time to listen to the small 
boy's confidences and stories, which Donald 
started to write at the age of six. 

Hugh, however, was his hero — a kind 
of demi-god. And truly there was some- 
thing Greek about the boy — in his singular 
beauty of person, coupled with his brilliant 
mental equipment, and above all in the 
nothing less than Spartan methods with 
which, in spite of a highly sensitive tem- 
perament, he set himself to overcome 
his handicap of a naturally delicate 
physique and a bad head for heights. 
He turned himself out quite an athlete, 
and actually cured his bad head by a 
course of walking on giddy heights, 
preferably roofs — the parapet of the 
tall four-storied house the children 

12 



ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" 



lived in being a favourite training 
ground. 

Donald was the apple of his eye, and 
he was quick to note a slight lack of 
vitality about the little boy — especially 
when he was growing fast — and a certain 
natural timidity. His letters from school 
are full of messages to and instructions 
concerning Donald's physical training, 
and from Sandhurst he would long to 
" run over and see after his boxing." 
He called him Don Diego, a name that 
suited the rather stately little fellow, and 
he used to fear sometimes that Donald 
was " getting too polite " and say he must 
" knock it out of him in the holidays." 
Needless to say, his handling of him was 
always very gentle. 

The other over- vital brother, if a prime 
amuser, was also a prime tease, and being 
nearer Donald in age was also much less 
gentle. 

Before very long these great personages 



ABOUT A "STUDENT IN ARMS" 



took themselves off " zum neuen taten." 
But their Odysses came home in the shape 
of letters, which, with their descriptions 
of strange countries and peoples and 
records of adventures — often the realiza- 
tion of boyish dreams — and also of diffi- 
culties overcome, were well calculated 
to appeal to Donald's childish imagina- 
tion, and to increase his admiration for 
the writers — and also his feeling of impo- 
tence, and of the impossibility of being 
able to follow in the tracks of such giants 
among men ! 

His mother, however, was his never- 
failing confidante and friend. His love 
and admiration for her were unbounded, as 
for her courage, unselfishness and con- 
stant thought for others, more especially 
for the poor and insignificant among her 
neighbours. Though the humblest minded 
of women, she could, when occasion 
demanded, administer a rebuke with a 
decision and a fire that must have won 

14 



ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" 

the heartfelt admiration of her diffident 
little son. 

He was not easily roused himself, but 
there is one instance of his being so that 
is eminently characteristic. He had come 
back from school evidently very perturbed, 
and at first his sister could get nothing out 
of him. But at last he flared up. His 
face reddened, his eyes burned like coals 
and, in a voice trembling with rage, he 

said, " (naming a school-fellow) talks 

about things that I won't even think ! " 

At the age of about 14 he, too, went 
to Rugby, and there is an interesting 
prophecy about him by his brother Hugh, 
belonging to this time. Hugh had by now 
earned a certain right to pronounce judg- 
ment, having already started to fulfil his 
early promise by making some mark as a 
soldier and a linguist. He had been 
invited to join the Egyptian Army at a 
critical time in the campaign of 1897-98, 
thanks to his proficiency in Arabic. His 

15 



ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" 

work was cut short by serious illness, the 
long period of convalescence after which he 
had utilized in working for and passing the 
Army Interpreter's examination in Turkish 
as well as the higher one in Arabic and his 
promotion exam. All of which achieve- 
ments had been of use in helping him to 
wring out of the War Office a promise of 
certain distinguished service in China. 
In a letter home he writes : — 

2nd Batt. the Royal Warwickshire Regt., 

The Camp, 

Colchester. 
28th Sept., 1899. 
My dear Mamma, — 

I packed Donald off to school to-day in good 
time and cold-less. . . . He was wonderfully 
calm and collected. He was more at his ease in 
our mess than I should have been in a strange 
mess, and made himself agreeable to his neighbours 
without being forward. Also he looked very clean 
and smart, and was altogether quite a success. 

That child has a future before him if his energy 
is up to form, which I hope. His philosophy is 
most amazing. He looks remarkably healthy, and 
is growing nicely. . . . 

16 



ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" 

Shortly after this letter was written 
the South African War broke out, and 
before six months were over the writer 
was killed in action, at the age of 27, 
whilst serving with the Mounted Infantry 
at Paardeburg. 

It was the first sorrow of Donald's life, 
but six months later he was to suffer a yet 
more crushing blow in the loss of his 
dearly loved mother. The loss of his best 
confidante and his ideal seemed at first to 
stun the boy completely, and to cast 
him in upon himself entirely. Later on 
he remembered that he had felt at that 
time that he had nothing to say to any 
one. He had wondered what the others 
could have thought of him, and had 
thought how dreadfully unresponsive they 
must be finding him. His sister should 
have been of some use. But she can only 
think of herself then as of some strange 
figure, veiled and petrified with grief — 
grief not for her mother, but for the young 

17 B 



ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" 



hero whose magnetism had thrilled through 
every moment of her life — yet pointing 
onwards, with mutely insistent finger, to 
the path that her hero had trodden. And 
Donald, dazed also himself by grief — 
though from another cause — of his own 
accord, placed his first uncertain steps on 
the road that leads to military glory. 
No " voice " warned him as yet, and he 
had no other decisive leading. 

If his sister failed him then, his father 
did not. Of him Donald wrote recently 
t® an aunt, " Papa's letters to me are 
a heritage whose value can never 
diminish. His was indeed the pen of a 
ready writer, and in his case, as in the case 
of many rather reserved people, the pen 
did more justice to the man than the 
tongue. I never knew him until Mamma's 
death, when the weekly letter from him 
took the place of hers, and never stopped 
till I came home." 

At Rugby Donald was accounted a 

18 



ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" 

dreamer. Without the outlet he had 
hitherto had for his confidences and his 
thoughts no doubt the tendency to dream 
grew upon him. " Behold this dreamer 
cometh," was actually said of him by 
one of his masters. 

Nevertheless there were happy times 
when youth asserted itself and boyish 
friendships were made. In work he did 
well, for he entered the sixth form at the 
early age of 16 J, and was thereby enabled, 
though he left young, to have his name 
painted up "in hall " below those of his 
three brothers, and also on his " study " 
door which belonged to each of the four 
in turn. 

He entered the Royal Military Academy, 
Woolwich, straight from Rugby, and 
before he was seventeen. We have his 
word for it that he was spiritually very 
unhappy there, finding evils with which 
he was impotent to grapple, going up as 
he did so young from school and before 

19 



ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" 

he had had time to acquire a " games " 
reputation — that all-important qualifica- 
tion for a boy if he wishes to influence 
his fellows. Nevertheless youthful spirits 
were bound to triumph sometimes. He 
was a perfectly sound and healthy, well- 
grown boy, and a friend who was with him 
at " the Shop " says he can remember no 
apparent trace of unhappiness, and is 
full of tales of his jokes and his fun, his 
quaint caricatures and doggerel rhymes, 
his love of flowers and nature, his hospital- 
ities, and his joy in getting his friends to 
meet and know and like each other. 
Though he made no mark at Woolwich 
he did carry off the prize for the best essay 
on the South African War. With it he 
made his first appearance in print, for it 
was printed in the R.M.A. Magazine. 
While he was at Woolwich the family 
circle was enlarged by the arrival of a 
cousin from Australia, and she and Donald 
became the greatest of friends. She 

20 



ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" 

reminded him in some way of his mother, 
and this made all the difference. 

The Island of Mauritius, to which he 
was sent at the age of twenty, not so very 
long after having received his commission 
in the Royal Garrison Artillery, stood for 
him later on, he has told us, as " Reve- 
lation " — "for there it was that I was 
first a sceptic, ,and was first shown that 
I could not remain one." Also towards 
the end of his stay there, when he was 
doubting as to what course he should 
take, a sentence came to him insistently, 
" Would you know Christ ? Lo, He is 
working in His vineyard." It was these 
things that decided him eventually to 
resign his commission, but of them his 
letters home make little or no mention. 
They are full, on the other hand, of descrip- 
tions of the beauties of the Island which, 
curious, odd, freakish and unexpected, 
held him as did those of no other place. 
The curious inconsistencies of the Creole 

21 



ABOUT A "STUDENT IN ARMS" 

nature also interested him, and he spent 
much of his spare time sketching and 
studying the people. Two friendships 
he made there were diverse and lasting, but 
he complains very much of feeling the lack 
of a woman friend — no one to tease and 
pick flowers for ! 

While he was still there, there appeared 
at home a baby nephew — another " Hugh " 
— " trailing clouds of glory," but to return 
all too soon to his " Eternal Home." Some 
years previously, when his eldest sister 
had told him of her engagement, he 
congratulated her warmly, and said he 
iC had always longed for a nephew " ! He 
never saw the child, but wrote after his 
death that he had heard so much about 
him that he seemed to know him, and " I 
think I must have played with him in my 
dreams." Possibly the baby nephew, in 
his short ten months of life, did more for 
his uncle than either knew, for no frozen 
hearts could do otherwise than melt in 

\ - 3 



ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" 

the presence of the insistent needs of that 
gallant little spirit and fragile little body, 
and a more whole-hearted sister was 
awaiting him on his return home, which 
took place at the end of two years, after 
he had fallen a victim to the prevalent 
complaint in the R.G.A. — abscess on the 
liver. It was caused by the shocking 
conditions under which the R.G.A. had 
to live in Mauritius during that hot sum- 
mer when the Russian Fleet sojourned in 
Madagascan waters, and in Donald's case 
it necessitated a severe operation. 

His joy in his homecoming was quickly 
clouded over, for his father died only a 
month or two after his return ; not, how- 
ever, before he had given a delighted 
acquiescence to Donald's proposal to 
resign his commission and go to Oxford 
in order to study theology — his own 
favourite pursuit — with the object of 
eventually taking Holy Orders. 

In the spring of 1907 Donald took a 

23 



ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" 

trip to Italy with his sister and a Rhodes 
Scholar cousin from Australia. It was 
the young men's first visit, and each 
brought back a special trophy : Donald's 
a large photograph of a fine virile " Por- 
trait of a man " by Giorgione in black and 
white, and his cousin a sweet Madonna 
head by Luini. 

Donald gave his sister her trophy on 
their return home, in remembrance of 
the lectures she had given the two of them 
on the pre-Raphaelite painters in Florence. 
It took the form of a water-colour carica- 
ture of herself, sitting enthroned in a 
Loggia as a sort of Sybil Saint with a 
halo and a book (Baedecker). Behind 
her, and outlined against a pale sky as 
seen through an archway of the Loggia 
in the typical Florentine fashion, are the 
blue mountains near Florence, some tall 
cypresses, a campanile and a castle perched 
on the top of a hill — all features of the 
landscapes through which they had passed 

24 



ABOUT " A STUDENT IN ARMS " 

together. In the foreground are him- 
self and his cousins as monks adoring, 
also with haloes, and expressions of mock 
ecstasy. 

On his return Donald went for a few 
months to Rugby House, the Rugby 
School Mission, in order to cram for 
Oxford. He thereby made a friend, and 
learned to love Browning. 

After living so long at Brighton, and 
then in barracks, the beauty of Oxford 
was in itself alone a revelation to him. 
The work there, too, was entirely con- 
genial. As a gunner subaltern he had 
been a square peg in a round hole. As 
regards the work there had been far too 
much to be accepted on authority for one 
of his fundamental type of mind ; the rela- 
tions existing between an officer and his 
men — in peace time, at any rate — seemed 
to him hardly human, and the making of 
quick decisions, which an officer is con- 
tinually called upon to do, was then as 

25 



ABOUT " A STUDENT IN ARMS " 

always very difficult to him. His tastes, 
too, unusual in a subaltern, had made 
him rather lonely. He found much more 
in common with the undergraduate than 
with the subaltern. Going up as an 
" oldster " (22) was to him an advantage 
rather than otherwise, for his six years 
in the Army had given him a certain pres- 
tige which was a help to his natural diffi- 
dence, and helped to open more doors to 
him, so that he was not limited to any set. 
He gained some reputation as a host, 
for he had the born host's gift of getting 
the right people together and making 
them feel at their ease. There was also, 
as a rule, some little individual touch 
about his entertainments that made them 
stand out. His manner, though natur- 
ally boyish and shy, could be both gay 
and debonair, quite irresistible in fact, 
when he was surrounded by congenial 
spirits. He played hockey, and was 
made a member of several clubs, sketched 

26 



ABOUT " A STUDENT IN ARMS " 

and made beautiful photographs. His 
time he divided strictly between the study 
of man and the study of theology, and 
though he did much hard, thorough and 
careful work in connexion with the latter, 
he always maintained that for a man who 
was going to be a parson the former was 
the more important study of the two. 

He used, however, to complain much 
at this time of feeling himself incapable of 
any very strong emotion, even that of sorrow. 

No doubt there is more stimulation to 
the brain than to the heart in the highly 
critical atmosphere of all phases of the 
intellectual life at Oxford, also Donald had 
hardly yet got over the shocks of his 
youth and the loneliness of his life abroad. 
He was, too, essentially and curiously 
the son of his father — even to his minor 
tastes, such as his connoisseur's , palate 
for a good wine and his judgment in 
"smokes" — and this feeling of a certain 
detachment from the larger emotions of 

27 



ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" 

life was always his father's pose — the 
philosopher's. In his father's case it was 
perhaps engendered, if not necessitated, 
by his poor health and wretched nerves. 
But can we not trace his dissatisfac- 
tion at this time in what he felt to be his 
cold philosophical attitude towards life 
to the same cause as much of the misery 
he suffered as a boy ? In the paper he 
calls " School," which follows with that 
entitled " Home," he tells us how he 
would have liked to have chastised a 
schoolfellow " had he dared," and his 
failure to dare was evidently what reduced 
him to the state of impotent rage de- 
scribed on page 15 of this sketch. Again 
at Woolwich, what made him unhappy 
was not so much the evils which he sa , w 
but his impotence to deal with them. 
So now again at Oxford he feels " impo- 
tent," impotent this time to feel and 
sympathize as he would have wished 
with suffering humanity. But within 

28 



ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" 

him was the light, " the light which is, of 
course, not physical," which betrayed 
itself through his wonderful smile, the 
same now as in babyhood ; and from his 
mother, and perhaps also from the young 
country that gave her birth, he had n- 
herited, as well as her great heart and 
broad human sympathies, the vigour that 
was to carry him through the experiences 
by means of which, in the fullness of time, 
that light, no longer dormant, was to 
break into a flame of infinite possibilities. 

Donald's one complaint against Oxford 
was that the ideas that are born and gener- 
ated there so often evaporate in talk and 
smoke. He left with the determination to 
" do," but before going on to a Clergy 
School he decided to accept a friend's invi- 
tation to visit him in savage Africa so 
that he might think things over, and put 
to the test, far away from the artificiali- 
ties of Modern Life, the ideas he had 
assimilated in the highly sophisticated 

29 



ABOUT " A STUDENT IN ARMS " 

atmosphere of Oxford. As he quaintly 
put it : " Since Paul went into Arabia 
for three years, I don't see why I should 
not go to British East Africa for six 
months ! " He did not, however, stay 
the whole time there, but re-visited his 
beloved Mauritius, and also stayed in 
Madagascar. 

The beginning of 1911 found him at the 
Clergy School. But what he wanted he 
did not find there. During his Oxford 
vacs he had made many expeditions to 
poorer London, at first to Notting Dale 
where was the Rugby School Mission, 
and afterwards to Bermondsey. But these 
expeditions had not been entirely satisfac- 
tory. He had then gone as a " visitor." 
The lessons he wanted to learn now from 
"the People" could only be learned by 
becoming as far as possible one of them. 
The story of his struggles to do so in his 
life in Bermondsey, and of his journey to 
Australia in the steerage of a German 

30 



ABOUT " A STUDENT IN ARMS " 

liner and of his roughing it there, always 
with the same object in view, cannot be 
told here. The first outcome of it all 
was the writing of his book, The Lord of 
All Good Life. Of this book he says, in a 
letter to his friend Tom Allen of the Oxford 
and Bermondsey Mission : — 

" The book I regard as my child. I 
feel quite absurdly about it ; to me it is 
the sudden vision of what lots of obscure 
things really meant. It is coming out 
of dark shadows into — moonlight. . . . 
I would have you to realize that it was 
written spontaneously in a burst, in six 
weeks, without any consultation of 
authorities or any revision to speak of. 
I had tried and tried, but without success. 
Then suddenly everything cleared up. 
To myself the writing of it was an illumi- 
nation. I did not write it laboriously and 
with calculation, or because I wanted to 
write a book and be an author. I wrote 

it because problems that had been troub- 

31 



ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" 

ling me suddenly cleared up and because 
writing down the result was to me the 
natural way of getting everything straight 
in my own mind." 

The book was written not away in the 
peace of the country, nor in the compara- 
tive quiet of a certain sunny little sit- 
ting-room I know of, looking on to a leafy 
back garden in Kensington, where Donald 
often sat and smoked and wrote, but in a 
little flat in a dull tenement house in a 
grey street in Bermondsey, where I re- 
member visiting him with a cousin of his. 

Here the Student lived like a lord — 
for Bermondsey ! For he possessed two 
flats, one for his " butler " — a sick-looking 
young man in list slippers — and his 
wife and family, and the other for him- 
self. 

The little sitting-room in which he 
entertained us was very pleasant, with 
light walls, a bright table cloth, a gleam 
of something brass that had come from 

32 



ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" 

Ceylon, one or two gaily painted dancing 
shields from Africa, and two barbaric 
looking dolls, about a foot high, dressed 
chiefly in beads and paint, that he had 
picked up in a shop in Tananarive^ 
Madagascar. They came in usefully when 
he was lecturing on Missions. 

His bedroom he did not want us to 
see. It struck cold and appeared to be 
reeking with damp. 

The weather had been rather dull when 
we arrived, but suddenly there was a 
glint of sunshine, and a grind-organ 
that had wandered up the street started 
playing just opposite. Two couple of 
children began to dance. A girl with a 
jug stopped to watch them, and mothers 
with babies came to their doors. A win- 
dow was thrown open opposite and a 
whole family of children leaned out to 
see the fun. 

Bermondsey was gay, and after we had 

gone the " Student " perpetuated the fact 
33 c 



ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" 

in a water-colour drawing which he sent 
to his cousin afterwards. 

In the evening, however, the sounds 
would be more discordant, also the Student 
was running a Boys' Club, taking several 
Sunday services at the Mission, visiting 
some very sick people, and attending to 
a multifarious list of duties which left me 
breathless when I saw it, knowing too 
how many casual appeals always came to 
him and that he never was known to 
refuse a helping hand to any one. Never- 
theless it was there, and in six weeks, that 
the Lord of All Good Life was written. 

" Then came the war," and the Student 
shall tell us in his own words what it 
meant to him. Writing still to Tom 
Allen, who had also enlisted, and after- 
wards also gave his life in the war, he 
says — 

" For myself the war was, in a sense, 
a heaven-sent opportunity. Ever since 
I left Leeds I have been trying to follow 

34 



ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" 

out the theory that the proper subject of 
study for the theologian was man, and 
had increasingly been made to feel that 
nothing but violent measures could over- 
come my own shyness sufficiently to 
enable me to study outside my own class. 
Enlistment had always appealed to me 
as one of the few feasible methods of 
ensuring the desired results. . . . 

" I was interested to hear that you 

found the so illuminating as regards 

human potentialities for bestiality. I 
think that I plumbed the depths between 
sixteen and a half and twenty- two. I 
have learned nothing more since then 
about bestiality. In fact I am hardened, 
and, I am afraid, take it for granted. 
Since then I have been discovering human 
goodness, which is far more satisfactory. 
And oh, I have found it ! In Ber- 
mondsey, in the stinking hold of the 
Zieten, in the wide, thirsty desert of Wes- 
tern Australia, and in the ranks of the 

35 



ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" 

7th Battalion of the Rifle Brigade. I 
enlisted very largely to find out how far 
I really believed in the brotherhood of 
man when it comes to the point — and I 
do believe in it more and more." 

Donald Hankey enlisted in August, 

1914, and after a period of training, part 
of which was certainly the happiest time 
of his life, he went to the front in May, 

1915, coming home wounded in August, 
when he wrote for the Spectator most of 
the articles that were published anony- 
mously the following spring under the 
title of " A Student in Arms." Before he 
left hospital he received a commission in 
his old regiment, the R.G.A., but still 
finding himself with no love for big guns, 
he transferred to his eldest brother's regi- 
ment, the Royal Warwickshire, hoping that 
by doing so he might get back to the 
Front the sooner. He did not,- however, 
leave until May, 1916, after he had written 
his contribution to "Faith or Fear." 

3G 



ABOUT " A STUDENT IN ARMS " 

Most of the numbers of the present 
volume were written in or near the trenches, 
and a fellow-officer gave his sister an in- 
teresting description of how it was done. 
" Your brother," said he, " will sit down 
in a corner of a trench, with his pipe, and 
write an article for the Spectator, or make 
funny sketches for his nephews and nieces, 
when none of the rest of us could concen- 
trate sufficiently even to write a letter." 

On October 6, Donald Hankey wrote 
home, " We shall probably be fighting by 
the time you get this letter, but one has 
a far better chance of getting through now 
than in July. I shall be very glad if we 
do have a scrap as we have been resting 
quite, long enough. Of course one always 
has to face possibilities on such occasions ; 
but we have faced them in advance, 
haven't we ? I believe with all my soul 
that whatever will be will be for the best. 
As I said before, I should hate to slide 
meanly into winter without a scrap. . . . 

37 



ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" 



I have a top-hole platoon — nearly all 
young, and nearly all have been out here 
eighteen months — thoroughly good sport- 
ing fellows ; so if I don't do well it will 
be my fault." 

Six days after this the Student knelt down 
for a few seconds with his men— we have it 
on the testimony of three of them — andjhe 
told them briefly what was before them : 
" If wounded, ' Blighty ' ; if killed, the 
Resurrection." Then " over the top." 
When he was last seen alive he was rallying 
his men, who had wavered for a moment 
under the heavy machine gun and rifle 
fire. He carried the waverers along with 
him, and was found that night close to 
the trench the winning of which had cost 
him his life, with his platoon sergeant 
and a few of his men by his side. 

What wonder that his cousin and best 
friend, when asked a short time previously 
what he was like, had replied, " He is the 
most beautiful thing that ever happened." 

38 



AUTHOR'S FOREWORD 



AUTHOR'S FOREWORD 

(Being Extracts from Letters to his 
Sister) 

" 1 am very much wondering whether 
you will receive ' A Diary ' in four parts. 
It is very much founded on fact, though 
altered in parts. You will probably be 
surprised at a certain change in tone, 
but remember that my previous articles 
were written in England, while this was 
written on the spot. . . . The Diary 
was not my diary, though it was so very 
nearly what mine might have been that 
it is difficult to say what is fiction and 
what is actuality in it. With regard to 
the ' conversation ' during the bombard- 
ment, it represents in its totality what I 
believe the ordinary soldier feels. He 
loathes the war, and the grandiloquent 

41 



AUTHOR'S FOREWORD 



speeches of politicians irritate him by 
their failure to realize how loathesome 
war is. At the same time he knows he 
has got to go through with it, and only 
longs for the chance to hurry up In the 
1 Diary,' again, I quite deliberately empha- 
sized the depression of the man who thought 
he was being left out, and the mental 
effect of the clearing-up process because 
I thought that it would be a good thing 
for people to realize this side, and also 
partly because I felt that in previous 
articles I had glossed over it too much. 
... If I get a chance of publishing 
another book I shall certainly include 
them." 



Note. — Not only " A Diary " and " Imaginary 
Conversations," but every paper in the present 
collection, with the exception of " The Wisdom," 
" A Potentate," and " A Passing in June," were 
written in France in 1916, and many of them 
actually in the trenches. The rough sketch for 
" A Passing in June " was written in France in 1915, 
42 



AUTHOR'S FOREWORD 



but was completed when the author was in hospital 
at home. 

" A Potentate" was written for the original volume 
of A Student in Arms, but was not published 
on account of its likeness in subject to Barrie's 
play, Der Tag, which, however, Donald had not 
seen or even heard of when he wrote his own. 



43 



THE POTENTATE 



THE POTENTATE 1 

Scene. A tent (interior). The Poten- 
tate is sitting at a table listening t§ 
his Court Chaplain. 

Court Chaplain (concluding his re- 
marks). Where can we look for the King- 
dom of God, Sire, if not among the Ger- 
man people ? Consider your foes. The 
English are Pharisees, hypocrites. Woe 
to them, saith the Lord. The French 
are atheists. The Belgians are ignorant 
and priest-ridden. The Russians are sunk 
in mediaeval superstition. As for the 
Italians, half are atheists and the other 
half idolaters. Only in Germany do you 

1 It is necessary to state that The Potentate was 
written before Sir James Barrie's play Der Tag 
appeared. 

47 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



find a reasonable and progressive faith, 
devoid of superstition, abreast of scien- 
tific thought, and of the highest ethical 
value. Germany then, Sire, is the King- 
dom of God on earth. The Germans are 
the chosen people, the heirs of the promise, 
and let their enemies be scattered ! 

(The Potentate rises, leans forward with 
his hands on the table, and an ex- 
pression of extreme gratification, while 
the Chaplain stands with a smug 
and respectful smile on his white face.) 

Potentate. You are right, my dear 
Clericus, abundantly right. Very well 
put indeed ! Yes, Germany is the King- 
dom of God, and I (drawing himself up 
to his full height) — I am Germany ! The 
strength of the Lord is in my right arm, 
and He teaches it terrible things for the 
unbeliever and the hypocrite. With God 
I conquer ! Good night, my dear Cleri- 
cus, good night. 

48 



THE POTENTATE 



(Clericus departs with a low bow, and 
the Potentate sinks into his chair 
with a gesture of fatigue. Enter a 
General of the Headquarters Staff 
with telegrams.) 

Potentate (brightening). Ha, my dear 
General, you have news ? 

General. Excellent news, Sire ! On 
the Eastern front the Russians continue 
to give way. In the West a French 
attack has been repulsed with heavy 
loss, and our gallant Prussians have driven 
the British out of half a mile of trenches. 

(At this last bit of news the Potentate 
springs to his feet with a look of joy.) 

Potentate. A sign ! My God, a sign ! 
Pardon, General, I was thinking of a con- 
versation that I have just had with Dr. 
Clericus. Come now, show me where 
these trenches are. 

(The General produces a map, over which 
they pore together.) 

49 d 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



Potentate. Excellent, excellent ! A 
most valuable capture. Our losses were 
. ? 

General. Slight, Sire. 

Potentate. Better and better. I 
cannot afford to lose my good Prussians, 
my heroic, my invincible Prussians. To 
what do you attribute the success ? 

General. The success was due in a 
large measure to the perfection of the 
apparatus suggested a week ago by your 
Majesty's scientific adviser. 

Potentate (blanching a little). Ah, 
then it was not a charge, eh ? 

General. The charge followed, Sire ; 
but the work was already done. The 
defenders of the trench were already 
dead or dying before our heroes reached 
it. 

Potentate (sinking back in his chair 
with his finger to his lips, and a slight 
frown). Thank you, General, your news 
is of the best. I will detain you no longer. 

50 



THE POTENTATE 



(The General bows.) Stay ! Has a 
counter-attack been launched yet ? 

General. Not yet, Sire. No doubt 
one will be attempted to-night. Our 
men are prepared. 

Potentate. Good. Bring me fresh 
news as soon as it arrives. Good night, 
General, good night. 

(Exit General.) 

( The Potentate sits musing for a consider- 
able time. A slight cough is heard, 
and he raises his head.) 
Potentate (slowly). Enter ! 
(Enter a tall -figure in a long black academic 
gown and black clothes.) 
Potentate (with an attempt at gaiety). 
Come in, my dear Sage, come in. You 
are welcome. (A little anxiously) You 
have the crystal ? Good. How is the 
Master ? Still busy devising new means 
of victory ? 

The Sage. My master's poor skill is 

51 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



always at your service, Sire. You have 
only to command. 

Potentate. I know it. Now let me 
have the crystal. I would see if possible 
the scene of to-day's victory in Flanders. 

(The Sage hands him the crystal with a 
low bow. The Potentate seizes it 
eagerly, and gazes into it. A pause.) 

Potentate (raising his head suddenly). 
Horrible, horrible ! 

Sage. Sire ? 

Potentate. This last invention of 
your master's is inhuman ! 

Sage. War is inhuman, Sire. Where 
a speedy end is desired, is it not kindest 
to be cruel ? 

( The Potentate gazes again into the crys- 
tal, but starts up immediately with 
a gasp of horror.) 

Potentate. Again the same vision ! 
Always after my victories the vision of 
the Crucified, with the stern reproachful 

52 



THE POTENTATE 



eyes ! Am I not the Lord's appointed 
instrument ? What means it ? Tell your 
master that I will have no more of his 
inventions. They are too diabolical ! 
They imperil my cause ! 

Sage {pointing to the crystal). Look 
again, Sire. 

Potentate (gazing into the crystal, and 
in a low and agonized voice). Time with 
his scythe raised menacingly against me. 
(Abruptly) This is a trickery, Sirrah ! 
Have a care ! But I will not be tricked. 
Are my troops not brave ? Are they not 
invincible ? Can they not win by their 
proven valour ? Who can stand against 
them, for the strength of the Lord is in 
their right hands ? 

(Enter General hastily.) 

General. Sire . . . (He starts, and 
stops short.) 

Potentate (testily). Go on, go on. 
What is it ? 

53 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



General. Sire, the English counter- 
attack has for the moment succeeded. 
Infuriated by their defeat they fought 
so that no man could resist them. They 
have regained the trenches they had 
lost, but we hope to attack again to- 
morrow, when 

Potentate. Enough ! Leave me ! 

(The General withdraws, and the Poten- 
tate leans forward with his head on 
his hands.) 

Sage (commiseratingly). Apparently 
other troops are brave besides your own, 
Sire ! 

Potentate (brokenly). The cowards ! 
The cowards ! Five nations against three ! 
Alas, my poor Prussians ! 

Sage. If you will look once more 
into the crystal, Sire, I think you will 
see something that will interest you. 

{The Potentate takes the crystal again 9 
but without confidence.) 

54 



THE POTENTATE 



Potentate (in a slow recitative). A 
stricken field by night. The dead lie 
everywhere, German and English, side 
by side. But all are not dead. Some 
are but wounded. They help one another. 
Prussian and Briton help one another, 
with painful smiles on their white faces. 
What ? Have they forgotten their hate ? 
My Prussians ! Can you so soon forget ? 
I mourn for you ! But who are these ? 
White figures, vague, elusive ! See, they 
seem to come down from above. They 
are carrying away the souls of my Prus- 
sians ! And of the accursed English ! 
What ! One Paradise for both ! Im- 
possible ! And who is that watching ? 
He who with a smile so loving, and yet 
so stern ... Ah ! ... My God . . . 
no ! . . . not I . . . 

(The Potentate rises with a strangled cry, 
and sinks into his chair a nerveless 
wreck. The Sage watches coolly, with 
a cynical smile.) 

55 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



Sage. So, Sire, you must find room 
for the English in that kingdom of yours 
and God's ! Perchance it is more catho- 
lic than we had thought ! 

{The Potentate groans.) 

Sage. Sire, you have seen some truth 
to-night. Is courage, is God, all on your 
side ? Is Time on your side ? Shall I 
go back to my master and tell him that 
you need no more of his inventions ? 

{He pauses, and glances at the Potentate 
with a look of contempt, and then 
turns to go. The Potentate looks 
round him with a ghastly stare.) 

Potentate {feebly). No . . . the Cru- 
cified . . . Time . . . Stay, stay ! 
{The Sage turns with a gesture of triumph.) 

{Curtain.) 



56 



THE BAD SIDE OF MILITARY 
SERVICE 



II 

THE BAD SIDE OF MILITARY 
SERVICE 

A padre who has earned the right to talk 
about the " average Tommy," writes to 
me that A Student in Arms gives a very 
one-sided picture of him. While cordially 
admitting his unselfishness, his good com- 
radeship, his patience, and his pluck, my 
friend challenges me to deny that military, 
and especially active, service often has a 
brutalizing effect on the soldier, weakening 
his moral fibres, and causing him to sink 
to a low animal level. 

Those who are in the habit of reading 
between the lines will, I think, often have 
seen the shadow of this darker side of 
army life on the pages of A Student in 
Arms ; but I have not written of it speci- 

59 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



fically for several reasons. It will suffice 
if I mention two. First, I was writing 
mainly of the private and the N.C.O. 
Rightly or wrongly, I imagined that those 
for whom I was writing were in the habit 
of taking for granted this darker side of 
life in the ranks. I imagined that they 
thought of the " lower classes " as being 
naturally coarser and more animal than 
the " upper classes." I wanted then, and 
I want now, to contradict that belief 
with all the vehemence of which I am 
capable. Officers and men necessarily de- 
velop different qualities, different forms 
of expression, different mental attitudes. 
But I am confident that I speak the truth 
when I say that essentially, and in the 
eyes of God there is nothing to choose 
between them. 

If I must write of the brutalizing effect 
of war on the soldier, let it be clearly 
understood that I am speaking, not of 
officers only, nor of privates only, but of 

60 



THE BAD SIDE OF MILITARY SERVICE 

fighting men of every class and rank. As 
a matter of fact I have never, whether 
before or during the war, belonged to a 
mess where the tone was cleaner or more 
wholesome than it was in the Sergeants' 
Mess of my old battalion. 

My second reason for not writing 
about the bad side of Army life was 
that mere condemnation is so futile. 
I have listened to countless sermons in 
which the " lusts of the flesh " were de- 
nounced, and have known for certain that 
their power for good was nil. If I write 
about it now, it is only because I hope that 
I may be able to make clearer the causes 
and processes of such moral deterioration 
as exists, and thus to help those who are 
trying to combat it, to do so with greater 
understanding and sympathy. 

Even in England most officers, and all 
privates, are cut off from their womenfolk. 
Mothers, sisters, wives, and sweethearts 
are inaccessible. All have a certain 

61 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



amount of leisure, and very little to do 
with it. All are physically fit and ment- 
ally rather unoccupied. All are living 
under an unnatural discipline from 
which, when the last parade of the day is 
over, there is a natural reaction. Finally, 
wherever there are troops, and especially 
in war time, there are " bad " women and 
weak women. The result is inevitable. 
A certain number of both officers and men 
" go wrong." 

Fifteen months ago I was a private 
quartered in a camp near Aldershot. 
After tea it began to get dark. The tent 
was damp, gloomy, and cold. The 
Y.M.C.A. tent and the Canteen tent were 
crowded. One wandered off to the town. 
The various soldiers' clubs were filled and 
overflowing. The bars required more 
cash than one possessed. The result was 
that one spent a large part of one's even- 
ings wandering aimlessly about the streets. 
Fortunately I discovered an upper room in 

62 



THE BAD SIDE OF MILITARY SERVICE 



a Wesleyan soldiers' home, where there 
was generally quiet, and an empty chair. 
I shall always be grateful to that " home," 
for the many hours which I whiled away 
there with a book and a pipe. But most 
of us spent a great deal of our leisure, bored 
and impecunious, " on the streets " ; and 
if a fellow ran up against " a bit of skirt," 
he was generally just in the mood to 
follow it wherever it might lead. The 
moral of this is, double your subscriptions 
to the Y.M.C.A., Church huts, soldiers' 
clubs, or whatever organization you fancy ! 
You will be helping to combat vice in the 
only sensible way. 

I don't suppose that the officers were 
much better off than we were. Their 
tents may have been a little lighter and less 
crowded than ours. They had a late 
dinner to occupy part of the long evening. 
They had more money to spend, and 
perhaps more to occupy their minds. But 
I fancy that as great a proportion of them 

63 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



as of us took the false step ; and though 
perhaps when they compared notes their 
language may have been less blunt than 
ours, I am not sure that, for this very 
reason, it may not have been more poison- 
ous. But mind you, we did not all go 
wrong, by any means, though I believe 
that some fellows did, both officers and 
men, who would not have done so if they 
had stayed at home with their mothers, 
sisters, sweethearts, or wives. 

So much for the Army at home. When 
we cross the Channel every feature is a 
hundred times intensified. Consider the 
fighting man in the trenches — and I am 
still speaking of both officers and men — 
the most ordinary refinements of life are 
conspicuously absent. There is no water 
to wash in. Vermin abound, sleeping 
and eating accommodation are frankly 
disgusting. One is obliged for the time 
to live like a pig. Added to this one is 
all the time in a state of nervous tension. 

64 



THE BAD SIDE OF MILITARY SERVICE 

One gets very little sleep. Every night 
has its anxieties and responsibilities. 
Danger or death may come at any moment. 
So for a week or a fortnight or a month, 
as the case may be. Then comes the 
return to billets, to comparative safety and 
comfort — the latter nothing to boast about 
though ! Tension is relaxed. There is 
an inevitable reaction. Officers and men 
alike determine to " gather rosebuds " 
while they may. Their bodies are fit, 
their wills are relaxed. If they are built 
that way, and an opportunity offers, they 
will " satisfy the lusts of the flesh." 

When there is real fighting to be done 
the dangers of the after-reaction are in- 
tensified. You who sit at home and 
read of glorious bayonet charges do not 
realize what it means to the man behind 
the bayonet. You don't realize the re- 
pugnance for the first thrust — a repug- 
nance which has got to ;be overcome. 
You don't realize the change that comes 

65 e 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



over a man when his bayonet is wet with 
the blood of his first enemy. He " sees 
red." The primitive " blood-lust," kept 
under all his life by the laws and principles 
of peaceful society, surges through his 
being, transforming him, maddening him 
with the desire to kill, kill, kill ! Ask 
any one who has been through it if this is 
not true. And that letting loose of a 
primitive lust is not going to be without 
its effect on a man's character. 

At the same time, of course, not all of us 
become animals out here. There are 
other influences at work. Caring for the 
wounded, burying the mutilated dead, 
cause one to hate war, and to value ten 
times more the ways of peace. Many are 
saved from sinking in the scale, by a love 
of home which is able to bridge the gulf 
which separates them from their beloved. 
The letters of my platoon are largely love 
letters — often the love letters of [married 
men to their wives. 

66 



THE BAD SIDE OF MILITARY SERVICE 

There is immorality in the Army ; when 
there is opportunity immorality is rife. 
Possibly there is more abroad than there is 
at home. If so it is because there is far 
greater temptation. Nevertheless, I fancy 
that my correspondent, who is a padre, 
a don, and at least the beginning of a 
saint, is perhaps inclined to exaggerate the 
extent of the evil in the Army as compared 
with civil life. I imagine that very few 
padres, especially if they are dons, and 
most of all if they are saints, realize that 
in civil life as in Army life, the average 
man is immoral, both in thought and deed. 
Let us be frank about this. What a doctor 
might call the " appetites " and a padre 
the " lusts " of the body, hold dominion 
over the average man, whether civilian or 
soldier, unless they are counteracted by a 
stronger power. The only men who are 
pure are those who are absorbed in some 
pursuit, or possessed by a great love; 
whether it be the love of clean, wholesome 

67 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



life which is religion, or the love of a noble 
man which is hero-worship, or the love of 
a true woman. These are the four powers 
which are stronger than " the flesh " — the 
zest of a quest, religion, hero-worship, and 
the love of a good woman. If a man is 
not possessed by one of these he will be 
immoral. 

Probably most men are immoral. The 
conditions of military, and especially of 
active service merely intensify the tempt- 
ation. Unless a soldier is wholly devoted 
to the cause, or powerfully affected by 
religion, or by hero-worship, or by pure 
love, he is immoral. 

Perhaps most men are immoral if they 
get the chance. Most soldiers are im- 
moral if they get the chance. But those 
who are trying to help the soldier can do so 
with a good heart if they realize that in 
him they have a foundation on which to 
build. Already he is half a hero-wor- 
shipper. Already he half believes in the 

68 



THE BAD SIDE OF MILITARY \ SERVICE 

beauty of sacrifice and in the life immortal. 
Already he is predisposed to value ex- 
ceedingly all that savours of clean, whole- 
some home life. On that foundation it 
should be possible to build a strong 
idealism which shall prevail against the 
flesh. And this is my last word — it is 
by building up, and not by casting down, 
that the soldier can be saved from de- 
gradation. The devil that possesses so 
many can only be cast out by an angel 
that is stronger than he. 



THE GOOD SIDE OF 
" MILITARISM" 



Ill 

THE GOOD SIDE OF " MILITARISM " 

I had a letter the other day from an Oxford 
friend. In it was this phrase : " I loathe 
militarism in all its forms." Somehow 
it took me back quite suddenly to the 
days before the war, to ideas that I had 
almost completely forgotten. I suppose 
that in those days the great feature of 
those of us who tried to be " in the forefront 
of modern thought " was their riotous 
egotism, their anarchical insistence on 
the claims of the individual at the expense 
even of law, order, society, and conven- 
tion. " Self-realization " we considered 
to be the primary duty of every man and 
woman. 

The wife who left her husband, chil- 
73 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



dren, and home because of her passion 
for another man was a heroine, brav- 
ing the hypocritical judgments of society 
to assert the claims of the individual soul. 
The woman who refused to abandon all 
for love's sake, was not only a coward 
but a criminal, guilty of the deadly sin 
of sacrificing her soul, committing it to 
a prison where it would languish and 
never blossom to its full perfection. The 
man who was bound to uncongenial 
drudgery by the chains of an early mar- 
riage or aged parents dependent on him, 
was the victim of a tragedy which drew 
tears from our eyes. The woman who 
neglected her home because she needed 
a " wider sphere " in which to develop her 
personality was a champion of women's 
rights, a pioneer of enlightenment. And, 
on the other hand, the people who went on 
making the best of uncongenial drudgery, 
or in any way subjected their individu- 
alities to what old-fashioned people called 

74 



THE GOOD SIDE OF "MILITARISM" 

duty, were in our eyes contemptible pol- 
troons. 

It was the same in politics and reli- 
gion. To be loyal to a party or obedient 
to a Church was to stand self-confessed 
a fool or a hypocrite. Self-realization, 
that was in our eyes the whole duty of 
man. 

And then I thought of what I had seen 
only a few days before. First, of bat- 
talions of men marching in the darkness, 
steadily and in step, towards the roar of 
the guns ; destined in the next twelve 
hours to charge as one man, without hesi- 
tation or doubt, through barrages of cruel 
shell and storms of murderous bullets. 
Then, the following afternoon, of a handful 
of men, all that was left of about three 
battalions after ten hours of fighting, a 
handful of men exhausted, parched, 
strained, holding on with grim determina- 
tion to the last bit of German trench, 
until they should receive the order to 

75 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



retire. And lastly, on the days and nights 
following, oi the constant streams of 
wounded and dead being carried down the 
trench ; of the unceasing search that for 
three or four days was never fruitless. 

Self-realization ! How far we have 
travelled from the ideals of those pre- 
war days. And as I thought things over 
I wondered at how faint a response that 
phrase, " I loathe militarism in all its 
forms," found in my own mind. 

Before the war I too hated " militarism." 
I despised soldiers as men who had sold 
their birthright for a mess of pottage. 
The sight of the Guards drilling in Wel- 
lington Barracks, moving as one man to 
the command of their drill instructor, 
stirred me to bitter mirth. They were 
not men but manikins. When I first 
enlisted, and for many months after- 
wards, the " mummeries of military dis- 
cipline," the saluting, the meticulous 
uniformity, the rigid suppression of indi- 

76 



THE GOOD SIDE OF "MILITARISM" 

vidual exuberance, chafed and infuriated 
me. I compared it to a ritualistic re- 
ligion, a religion of authority only, 
which depended not on individual assent 
but on tradition for its sanctions. I 
loathed militarism in all its forms. Now 
. . . well, I am inclined to reconsider 
my judgment. Seeing the end of military 
discipline, has shown me something of its 
ethical meaning — more than that, of its 
spiritual meaning. 

For though the part of the " great 
push " that it fell to my lot to see was 
not a successful part, it was none the less 
a triumph — a spiritual triumph. ^From 
the accounts of the ordinary war corre- 
spondent I think one hardly realizes 
how great a spiritual triumph it was. 
For the war correspondent only sees the 
outside, and can only describe the out- 
side of things. We who are in the Army, 
who know the men as individuals, who 
have talked with them, joked with them, 

77 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



censored their letters, worked with them, 
lived with them we see below the surface. 
The war correspondent sees the faces of 
the men as they march towards the Valley 
of the Shadow, sees the steadiness of eye 
and mouth, hears the cheery jest. He 
sees them advance into the Valley with- 
out flinching. He sees some of them 
return, tired, dirty, strained, but still 
with a quip for the passer-by. He gives 
us a picture of men without nerves, with- 
out sensitiveness, without imagination, 
schooled to face death as they would face 
rain or any trivial incident of everyday 
life. The " Tommy " of the war corre- 
spondent is not a human being, but a lay 
figure with a gift for repartee, little more 
than the manikin that we thought him 
in those far-off days before the war, when 
we watched him drilling on the barrack 
square. We soldiers know better. We 
know that each one of those men is an 
individual, full of human affections, many 

78 



THE GOOD SIDE OF "MILITARISM" 

of them writing tender letters home every 
week, each one longing with all his soul 
for the end of this hateful business of war 
which divides him from all that he 
loves best in life. We know that every 
one of these men has a healthy in- 
dividual's repugnance to being maimed, 
and a human shrinking from hurt and 
from the Valley of the Shadow of Death. 
The knowledge of all this does not do 
away with the even tread of the troops 
as they pass, the steady eye and mouth, 
the cheery jest ; but it makes these a 
hundred times more significant. For 
we know that what these things signify 
is not lack of human affection, or weak- 
ness, or want of imagination, but some- 
thing superimposed on these, to which 
they are wholly subordinated. Over and 
above the individuality of each man, his 
personal desires and fears and hopes, 
there is the corporate personality of the 
soldier which knows no fear and only one 

79 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



ambition — to defeat the enemy, and so to 
further the righteous cause for which he is 
righting. In each of those men there is 
this dual personality : the ordinary human 
ego that hates danger and shrinks from 
hurt and death, that longs for home, 
and would welcome the end of the war 
on any terms ; and also the stronger 
personality of the soldier who can tol- 
erate but one end to this war, cost what 
that may — the victory of liberty and jus- 
tice, and the utter abasement of brute 
force. 

And when one looks back over the 
months of training that the soldier has 
had, one recognizes how every feature of 
it, though at the time it often seemed 
trivial and senseless and irritating, was 
in reality directed to this end. For ifrom 
the moment that a man becomes a soldier 
his dual personality begins. Henceforth 
he is both a man and a soldier. Before 
his training is complete the order must 

80 



THE GOOD SIDE OF "MILITARISM" 

be reversed, and he must be a soldier and 
a man. As a soldier he must obey and 
salute those whom, as a man, he very 
likely dislikes and despises. In his con- 
duct he no longer only has to consider 
his reputation as a man, but still more 
his honour as a soldier. In all the condi- 
tions of his life, his dress, appearance^ 
food, drink, accommodation, and work,, 
his individual preferences count for no- 
thing, his efficiency as a soldier counts for 
everything. At first he " hates " this, 
and " can't see the point of " that. But 
by the time his training is complete he 
has realized that whether he hates a 
thing or not, sees the point of a thing or 
not, is a matter of the uttermost unim- 
portance. If he is wise, he keeps his likes 
and dislikes to himself. 

All through his training he is learn- 
ing the unimportance of his individual- 
ity, realizing that in a national, a 
world crisis, it counts for nothing*. 

81 F 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



On the other hand, he is equally learning 
that as a unit in a fighting force his 
every action is of the utmost import- 
ance. The humility which the Army 
inculcates is not an abject self-deprecia- 
tion that leads to loss of self-respect and 
effort. Substituted for the old indivi- 
dualism is a new self-consciousness. The 
man has become humble, but in proportion 
the soldier has become exceeding proud. 
The old personal whims and ambitions 
give place to a corporate ambition and 
purpose, and this unity of will is symbol- 
ized in action by the simultaneous exacti- 
tude of drill, and in dress by the rigid 
identity of uniform. Anything which 
calls attention to the individual, whether 
in drill or in dress, is a crime, because it 
is essential that the soldier's individuality 
should be wholly subordinated to the 
corporate personality of the regiment. 

As I said before, the personal humility 
of the soldier has nothing in it of abject 

82 



THE GOOD SIDE OF "MILITARISM" 

self- depreciation or slackness. On the 
contrary, every detail of his appearance, 
and every most trivial feature of his duty 
assumes an immense significance. Slack- 
ness in his dress and negligence in his 
work are military crimes. In a good regi- 
ment the soldier is striving after perfection 
all the time. 

And it is when he comes to the supreme 
test of battle that the fruits of his train- 
ing appear. The good soldier has learnt 
the hardest lesson of all — the lesson of 
self-subordination to a higher and bigger 
personality. He has learnt to sacrifice 
everything which belongs to him individu- 
ally to a cause that is far greater than 
any personal ambitions of his own can 
ever be. He has learnt to do this so 
thoroughly that he knows no fear — for 
fear is personal. He has learnt to " hate " 
father and mother and life itself for the 
sake of — though he may not call it that — 
the Kingdom of God on earth. 

83 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



It is a far cry from the old days when 
one talked of self-realization, isn't it ? 
I make no claim to be a good soldier ; but 
I think that perhaps I may be beginning 
to be one ; for if I am asked now whether 
I " loathe militarism in all its forms," I 
think that " the answer is in the negative." 
I will even go farther, and say that I hope 
that some of the discipline and self-sub- 
ordination that have availed to send men 
calmly to their death in war, will survive 
in the days of peace, and make of those who 
are left better citizens, better workmen, 
better servants of the State, better 
Churchmen. 



84 



A MONTH'S EXPERIENCES 



IV 

A MONTH'S EXPERIENCES 

Timothy and I are on detachment. We 
are billeted with M. le Cure, and we 
mess at the schoolmaster's. Hence we 
are on good terms with all parties, for 
of course a good schoolmaster shrugs his 
shoulders at a priest, and a good priest 
returns the compliment. In war time, 
however, the hatchet seems to be buried 
pretty deep. We have not seen it stick- 
ing out anywhere. 

M. le Cure has a beautiful rose garden, 
a cask of excellent cider, a passable 
Sauterne, and a charming pony. He is a 
good fellow, I should think, though with- 
out much education. His house — or what 
I have seen of it — is the exact opposite 
of what an English country vicar's would 

87 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



be. The only sitting-room that I have 
seen is as neat as an old maid's. There 
is a polished floor, an oval polished table 
on which repose four large albums at 
regular intervals, each on its own little 
mat. There is a mantelpiece with gilt 
candlesticks and an ornate clock under 
a glass dome. Round the walls are 
photographs of brother clergy, the place 
of honour being assigned to a stout 
Chanoine. The chairs are stiff and un- 
comfortable. One of them, which is more 
imposing and uncomfortable than the 
rest, is obviously for the Bishop when he 
comes. There are no papers, no books, 
no ash-trays, no confusion. I have never 
seen M. le Cure sit there. I fancy he 
lives in the kitchen and in his garden. 

Timothy sleeps in the bed which the 
Bishop uses, and is told he ought to feel 
tres saint. 

The wife of the schoolmaster cooks for 
us. She is an excellent soul. We give 

88 



A MONTH'S EXPERIENCES 



her full marks. She has a smile and an 
omelette for every emergency, and waves 
aside all Timothy's vagaries with " Ah, 
monsieur, la jeunesse ! " I am not sure 
that Timothy quite likes it ! 

Timothy is immense. He is that rarest 
of birds, a wholly delightful egotist. He 
is the sun, but we all bask and shine with 
reflected glory. The men are splendid, 
because they are his men. I am a great 
success because I am his subaltern. For- 
tunately we all have a sense of humour 
and so are highly pleased with ourselves 
and each other. After all, if one is a 
Captain at twenty-two . . . ! But he's a 
good soldier, too, and we all believe in 
him. Timothy's all right, in spite of 
la jeunesse ! 

Rain ! The men are fifteen in a tent 
in a sea of mud. Poor beggars ! They 
are having a thin time. Working parties 
in the trenches day and night ; every one 

89 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



soaked to the skin ; and then a return 
to a damp, crowded, muddy tent. No 
pay, no smokes, and yet they are won- 
derfully cheery, and all think that the 
" Push " is going to end the war. I wish 
I thought so ! 

These rats are the limit ! The dug- 
out swarms with them. Last night they 
ate half my biscuits and a good part 
of Timothy's clean socks, and whenever 
I began to get to sleep one of them 
would run across my face, or some other 
sensitive part of my anatomy, and wake 
me up. I shall leave the candle alight 
to-night, to see if that keeps them away. 

Last night the rats tried to eat the candle, 
and very nearly set me on fire. If it were 
not for the rain I would try the firestep. 

The men are having a rotten time again 
— no proper shelter from the rain, and 
short rations, to say nothing of remarkably 

90 



A MONTH'S EXPERIENCES 



good practice by the Boche artillery. 
C , just out from England, got scup- 
pered this afternoon. A good boy — made 
his communion just before we came in. 
I suppose he didn't know much about it, 
and that he is really better off now ; but 
at the same time it makes one angry. 

The rain has lifted, so last night I 
tried the firestep, and got a good sleep. 
The absurd thing was that I couldn't 
wake up properly. I came on duty at 
midnight, was roused, got to my feet, 
and started to walk along the trench. 
And then the Nameless Terror, that lurks 
in dark corners when one is a small boy, 
gripped me. I was frightened of the dark, 
filled with a sense of impending disaster ! 
It took about ten minutes to wake pro- 
perly and shake it off. I must try to get 
more sleep somehow ; but it is jolly 
difficult. 



91 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



The great bombardment has begun, 
the long-promised strafing of the Boche. 
According to the gunners they will all 
be dead, buried, or dazed when the time 
comes for us to go over the top. I doubt 
it ! If they have enough deep dug-outs 
I don't fancy that the bombardment will 
worry them very much. 

Now we are at rest for a day or two 
before the Push. I am to be left out — 
in charge of carriers. Damn ! I might 
as well be A.S.C. I see myself counting 
ration bags while the battalion is charging 
with fixed bayonets ; and in the evening 
sending up parties of weary laden carriers 
over shell-swept areas, while I myself 
stay behind at the Dump. Damn ! 
Damn ! ! Damn ! ! ! Then I shall receive 
ironical congratulations on my " cushy " 
job. 

Have just seen the battalion off. I 

92 



A MONTH'S EXPERIENCES 



don't start for another five hours. I 
loathe war. It is futile, idiotic. I would 
gladly be out of the Army to-morrow. 
Glory is a painted idol, honour a phan- 
tasy, religion a delusion. We wallow in 
blood and torture to please a creature of 
our imagination. We are no better than 
South Sea Islanders. 

Just here the attack was a failure. 
Wlien I got to the Dump I found the 
battalion still there. By an irony of 
fate I was the only officer of my com- 
pany to set foot in the German lines. 
After a day of idleness and depression I 
had to detail a party to carry bombs at 
top speed to some relics of the leading 
battalions, who were still clinging to the 
extremest corner of the enemy's front 
line some distance to our left. Being fed 
up with inaction, I took the party myself. 
It was a long way. The trenches were 
choked with wounded and stragglers and 

93 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



troops who had never been ordered to 
advance. In many places they were 
broken down by shell-fire. In others they 
were waist-deep in water. By dint of 
much shouting and shoving and cursing 
I managed to get through with about 
ten of my men, but had to leave the 
others to follow with a sergeant. 

At last we sighted our objective, a cluster 
of chalk mounds surrounded with broken 
wire, shell craters, corpses, wreathed in 
smoke, dotted with men. I think we all ran 
across the ground between our front line 
and our objective, though it must have 
been more or less dead ground. Anyhow, 
only one man was hit. When we got 
close the scene was absurdly like a con- 
ventional battle picture — the sort of pic- 
ture that one never believes in for a 
minute. There was a wild mixture of 
regiments — Jocks, Irishmen, Territorials, 
etc., etc. There was no proper trench left. 
There were rifles, a machine gun, a Lewis 

94 



A MONTH'S EXPERIENCES 



rifle, and bombs all going at the same time. 
There were wounded men sitting in a kino! 
of helpless stupor ; there were wounded 
trying to drag themselves back to our own 
lines ; there were the dead of whom no 
one took any notice. But the prevailing 
note was one of utter weariness coupled 
with dogged tenacity. 

Here and there were men who were 
self-conscious, wondering what would 
become of themselves. I was one of 
them, and we were none the better for 
it. Most of the fellows, though, had 
forgotten themselves. They no longer 
flinched, or feared. They had got beyond 
that. They were just set on clinging to 
that mound and keeping the Huns at bay 
until their officer gave the word to retire. 
Their spirit was the spirit of the oarsman, 
the runner, or the footballer, who has 
strained himself to the utmost, who if he 
stopped to wonder whether he could go 
on or not would collapse ; but who, 

95 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



because he does not stop to wonder, goes 
on miraculously long after he should, by 
all the laws of nature, have succumbed to 
sheer exhaustion. 

Having delivered my bombs into eager 
hands, I reported to the officer who seemed 
to be in charge, and asked if I could do 
anything. I must frankly admit that my 
one hope was that he would not want me 
to stay. He began to say how that 
morning he had reached his objective, and 
how for lack of support on his flank, for 
lack of bombs, for lack of men, he had 
been forced back ; and how for eight 
hours he had disputed every inch of 
ground till now his men could only cling 
to these mounds with the dumb mechani- 
cal tenacity of utter exhaustion. " You 
might go to H.Q.," he said at last, " and 
tell them where I am, and that I can't 
hold on without ammunition and a bar- 
rage." 

I am afraid that I went with joy on 
96 



A MONTH'S EXPERIENCES 



that errand. I did not want to stay on 
those chalk mounds. 

I only saw a very little bit of the 
battle. Thank God it has gone well: 
elsewhere ; but here we are where we 
started. Day and night we have done 
nothing but bring in the wounded and 
the dead. When one sees the dead, 
their limbs crushed and mangled, their 
features distorted and blackened, one can 
only have repulsion for war. It is easy 
to talk of glory and heroism when one is 
away from it, when memory has softened 
the gruesome details. But here, in the 
presence of the mutilated and tortured 
dead, one can only feel the horror and 
wickedness of war. Indeed it is an evil 
harvest, sown of pride and arrogance and 
lust of power. Maybe through all this, 
evil and pain we shall be purged of many 
sins. God grant it ! If ever there were 
martyrs, some of these were m rtyrs^ 

97 G 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



facing death and torture as ghastly as any 
that confronted the saints of old, and 
facing it with but little of that fierce 
fanatical exaltation of faith that the early 
Christians had to help them. 

For these were mostly quiet souls, loving 
their wives and children and the little com- 
forts of home life most of all, little stirred by 
great emotions or passions. Yet they had 
some love for liberty, some faith in God — 
not a high and flaming passion, but a quiet 
insistent conviction. It was enough to 
send them out to face martyrdom, though 
their lack of imagination left them merci- 
fully ignorant of the extremity of its 
terrors. It was enough, when they saw 
their danger in its true perspective, to 
keep them steadfast and tenacious. 

For them "it is finished." R.I.P. 



98 



ROMANCE 



V 

ROMANCE 

I suppose that there are very few officers 
or men who have been at the front for 
any length of time who would not be 
secretly, if not openly, relieved and de- 
lighted if they " got a cushy one " and 
found themselves en route for " Blighty " ; 
yet in many ways soldiering at the front 
is infinitely preferable to soldiering at 
home. One of the factors which count 
most heavily in favour of the front, is the 
extraordinary affection of officers for 
their men. 

In England officers hardly know their 
men. They live apart, only meet on 
parade, and their intercourse is carried 
on through the prescribed channels. 
Even if you do get keen on a par- 
101 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



ticular squad of recruits, or a particular 
class of would-be bombers, you lose them 
so soon that your enthusiasm never ripens 
into anything like intimacy. But at the 
front you have your own platoon ; and 
week after week, month after month, 
you are living in the closest proximity ; 
you see them all day, you get to know the 
character of each individual man and 
boy, and the result in nearly every case 
is this extraordinary affection of which 
I have spoken. 

You will find it in the most unlikely 
subjects. I have heard a Major, a 
Regular with, as I thought, a good 
deal of regimental stiffness, talk about 
his men with a voice almost choked with 
emotion. " When you see what they 
have to put up with, and how amazingly 
cheery they are through it all, you feel that 
you can't do enough for them. They make 
you feel that you're not fit to black their 
boots." And then he went on to tell how 
102 



ROMANCE 



it was often the fellows whom in England 
you had despaired of, fellows who were 
always "up at orders," who out at the 
front became your right-hand men, the 
men on whom you found yourself relying. 

I had a letter not long ago from a gunner 
Captain, also a Regular, who has been 
out almost since the beginning of the war. 
He wrote : " One of my best friends has 
just been killed " ; and the " best friend " 
was not the fellow he had known at " the 
shop," or played polo with in India, or 
hunted with in Ireland, but a scamp of 
a telephonist, who had stolen his whisky 
and owned up ; who had risked his life 
for him, who had been a fellow-sportsman 
who could be relied on in a tight corner 
in the most risky of all games. 

There is indeed a glamour and a pathos 
about the private soldier, especially when, 
as so often happens, he is really only a 
boy. When you meet him in the trenches, 
wet, covered with mud, with tired eyes 

103 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



speaking of long watches and hours of 

risky work, he never fails to greet you 

with a smile, and you love him for it, 

and feel that nothing you can do can 

make up to him for it. For you have 

slept in a much more comfortable place 

than he has. You have had unlimited 

tobacco and cigarettes. You have had 

a servant to cook for you. You have 

fared sumptuously compared with him. 

You don't feel his superior. You don't 

want to be " gracious without undue 

familiarity." Exactly what you want to 

do is a bit doubtful — the Major said he 

wanted to black his boots for him, and 

that is perhaps the best way of expressing 

it. 

When he goes over the top and works 
away in front of the parapet with the 
moon shining full and the machine guns 
busy all along ; when he gets back to 
billets, and throws off his cares and bathes 
and plays games like any irresponsible 

104 



ROMANCE 



schoolboy ; even when he breaks bounds 
and is found by the M.P. skylarking in 

, you can't help loving him. Most 

of all, when he lies still and white with a 
red stream trickling from where the 
sniper's bullet has made a hole through 
his head, there comes a lump in your throat 
that you can't swallow, and you turn away 
so that you shan't have to wipe the tears 
from your eyes. 

Gallant souls, those boys, and all the 
more gallant because they hate war so 
much. Their nerves quiver when a shell or 
a " Minnie " falls into the trench near them, 
and then they smile to hide their weak- 
ness. They hate going over the parapet 
when the machine guns are playing ; so 
they don't hesitate, but plunge over with 
a smile to hide their fears. Their cure 
for every mental worry is a smile, their 
answer to every prompting of fear is a 
plunge. They have no philosophy or 
fanaticism to help them — only the sport- 

105 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



ing instinct which is in every healthy 
British boy. 

Then there are " the old men," less 
attractive, less stirring to the imagination, 
less sensitive, but who grow upon you 
more and more as you get to know them. 
Any one over twenty-three or so is an 
" old man." They have lost the grace, 
the irresponsibility, the sensibility of 
youth. Their eyes and mouths are 
steadier, their movements more deliberate. 
But they are the fellows whom you would 
choose for a patrol, or a raid, where a 
cool head and a stout heart are what is 
wanted. It takes you longer to know 
these. They are less responsive to your 
advances. But when you have tested 
them and they have tested you, you know 
that you have that which is stronger than 
any terror of night or day, a loyalty which 
nothing can shake. 

And then when he thinks how little 
he deserves all this love and loyalty, the 

106 



ROMANCE 



subaltern's heart aches with a feeling 
that can find no expression either in word 
or deed. 

This is a tale that has often been told, 
and that people in England know by 
heart. It cannot be told too often. It 
cannot be learnt too well. For the time 
will come when we shall need to remember 
it, and when it will be easy to forget. Will 
you remember it, O ye people, when the 
boy has become a man, and the soldier 
has become a workman ? But there are 
other tales to tell. There are the tales 
of the sergeant-major and the sergeants, 
the corporals and the " lance- jacks." 
Sergeant-majors, sergeants, and corporals 
are not romantic figures. If you think of 
them at all, you probably think of rum- 
jars and profanity. Yet they are the 
very backbone of the Army. I have been 
a sergeant and I have been a private sol- 
dier, and I know that the latter has much 
the better time of the two. He at least has 

107 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



the kind of liberty which belongs to utter 
irresponsibility. If he breaks bounds in 
the exuberance of his spirits, no one thinks 
much worse of him as long as he does not 
make a song about paying the penalty I 
Of course he has to be punished. So 
many days of sleeping in the guard tent, 
extra fatigues, pack-drill, and perhaps a 
couple of hours tied up, as an example to 
evildoers. But if he has counted the 
cost, and pays the price with a grin, we just 
say " Young scamp ! " and dismiss the 
matter. But if a sergeant or a corporal 
does the same, that's a very, different 
matter. He has shown himself unfit for 
his job. He has betrayed a trust. We 
cannot forgive him. Responsibility has 
its disadvantages. The senior N.C.O. gets 
no relaxation from discipline. In the 
line and out of it he must always be watch- 
ful, self-controlled, orderly. He must 
never wink. These men have not the 
glamour of the boy private ; but their high 

103 



ROMANCE 



sense of duty and discipline, their keenness 
and efficiency, merit all the honour that 
we can give them. 

Finally — for it would not do for a sub- 
altern to discuss his superiors — we come 
to the junior officer. Somehow I fancy 
that in the public eye he too is a less 
romantic figure than the private. One 
does not associate him with privations 
and hardships, but with parcels from 
home. Well, it is quite right. He has 
such a much less uncomfortable time than 
his men that he does not deserve or want 
sympathy on that score. He is better 
off in every way. He has better quarters, 
better food, more kit, a servant, and in 
billets far greater liberty. And yet there 
is many a man who is now an officer who 
looks back on his days as a private with 
regret. Could he have his time over 
again . . . yes, he would take a commis- 
sion ; but he would do so, not with any 
thought for the less hardship of it, but 

109 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



from a stern sense of duty — the sense of 
duty which does not allow a man with any 
self-respect to refuse to shoulder a 
heavier burden when called upon to do 
so. 

Those apparently irresponsible subalterns 
whom you see entertaining their lady 
friends at the Carlton or Ciro's do, when 
they are at the front, have very heavy 
responsibilities. Even in the ordinary 
routine of trench life, so many decisions 
have to be made, with the chance of a 
" telling off " whichever way you choose, 
and the lives of other men hanging in the 
balance. Suppose you are detailed for a 
wiring party, and you arrive to find a full 
moon beaming sardonically down at you. 
What are you to do ? If you go out you 
may be seen. Half a dozen of your men 
may be mown down by a machine gun. 
You will be blamed and will blame your- 
self for not having decided to remain 
behind the parapet. If you do not go 

110 



ROMANCE 



out you may set a precedent, and night 
after night the work will be postponed, 
till at last it is too late, and the Hun has 
got through, and raided the trench. If 
you hesitate or ask advice you are lost. 
You have to make up your mind in an 
instant, and to stand by it. If you waver 
your men will never have confidence in 
you again. 

Still more in a push ; a junior subaltern 
is quite likely to find himself at any 
time in command of a company, while 
he may for a day even have to com- 
mand the relics of a battalion. I have 
seen boys almost fresh from a Public 
School in whose faces there were two 
personalities expressed : the one full of 
the lighthearted, reckless, irresponsible 
vitality of boyhood, and the other scarred 
with the anxious lines of one to whom a 
couple of hundred exhausted and nerve- 
shattered men have looked, and not looked 
in vain, for leadership and strength in 
ill 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



their grim extremity. From a boy in 
such a position is required something far 
more difficult than personal courage. If 
we praise the boy soldier for his smile in 
the face of shells and machine guns, don't 
let us forget to praise still more the boy 
officer who, in addition to facing death 
on his own account, has to bear the respon- 
sibility of the lives of a hundred other men. 
There is many a man of undoubted courage 
whose nerve would fail to bear that 
strain. 

A day or two ago I was reading Romance, 
by Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Hueffer. 
It is a glorious tale of piracy and adventure 
in the West Indies ; but for the moment 
I wondered how it came about that Con- 
rad, the master of psychology, should have 
helped to write such a book. And then 
I understood. For these boys who hate 
the war, and suffer and endure with the 
smile that is sometimes so difficult, and 
long with a great longing for home and 
112 



ROMANCE 



peace — some day some of them will look 
back on these days and will tell them- 
selves that after all it was " Romance," 
the adventure, which made their lives 
worth while. And they will long to feel 
once again the stirring of the old comrade- 
ship and love and loyalty, to dip their 
clasp-knives into the same pot of jam, 
and lie in the same dug-out, and work on 
the same bit of wire with the same machine 
gun striking secret terror into their hearts, 
and look into each other's eyes for the 
same courageous smile. For Romance, 
after all, is woven of the emotions, especi- 
ally the elemental ones of love and loyalty 
and fear and pain. 

We men are never content ! In the 
dull routine of normal life we sigh for 
Romance, and sometimes seek to create 
it artificially, stimulating spurious pas- 
sions, plunging into muddy depths in 
search of it. Now we have got it we 
sigh for a quiet life. But some day 
113 H 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



those who have not died will say : " Thank 
God I have lived ! I have loved, and 
endured, and trembled, and trembling, 
dared. I have had my romance." 



114 



IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 



VI 

IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 

I 
Scene. A field in Flanders. All round 
the edge are bivouacs, built of sticks 
and waterproof sheets. Three men are 
squatting round a small fire, waiting 
for a couple of mess-tins of water to 
boil. 

Bill (gloomily). The last three of the 
old lot ! Oo's turn next ? 

Fred. Wot's the bleedin' good of 
bein' dahn in the mahf abaht it ? Give 
me the bleedin' 'ump, you do. 

Jim. Are we dahn-'earted ? Not 'alf, 
we ain't ! 

Bill. I don't know as I cares. Git it 
over, I sez. 'Ave done wiv it ! I dessay 
117 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



as them wot's gone West is better off nor 
wot we are, arter all. 

Jim. Orlright, old sport, you go an' 
look for the V.C., and we'll pick up the 
bits an' bury 'em nice an' deep ! 

Bill. If this 'ere bleedin' war don't 
finish soon that's wot I bleedin' well will 
go an' do. Wish they'd get a move on 
an' finish it. 

Fred. If ever I gets 'ome agin, I'll 
never do another stroke in my natural. 

The old woman can keep me, 'er, 

an' if she don't I'll well 'er 

Jim (indignantly). Nice sort o' bloke 
you are ! Arter creatin' abaht ole Bill 
makin' you miserable, you goes on to 
plan 'ow you'll make other folks miser- 
able ! Wot's the bleedin' good o' that ? 
Keep smilin', I sez, an' keep other folks 
smilin' too, if you can. If ever I gets 
'ome I'll go dahn on my bended, I will, 
and I'll be a different sort o' bloke to 

118 



IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 

wot I been afore. Swelp me, Bob, I 
will ! My missus won't 'ave no cause to 
wish as I'd been done in. 

Bill. Ah well, it don't much matter. 
We're all most like to go afore this war's 
finished. 

Jim. If yer goes yer goes, and that's 
all abaht it. A bloke's got to go some 
day, and fer myself I'd as soon get done 
in doin' my dooty as I would die in my 
bed. I ain't struck on dyin' afore my 
time, and I don't know as I'm greatly 
struck on livin', but, whichever it is, you 
got ter make the best on it. 

Bill (meditatively). I woulden mind 
stoppin' a bullet fair an' square ; bur I 
woulden like one of them 'orrible lingerin' 
deaths. "Died o' wounds " arter six 
munfs' mortal hagony — that's wot gets 
at me. Git it over an' done wiv, I sez. 

Fred (querulously). Ow, chuck it, 
Bill. You gives me the creeps, you do. 

Jim. I knowed a bloke onest in civil 

119 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



life wot died a lingerin' death. Lived 
in the second-floor back in the same 'ouse 
as me an' my missus, 'e did. Suffered 
somefink' 'orrible, 'e did, an' lingered 
more nor five year. Yet I reckon 'e was 
one o' the best blokes as ever I come 
acrost. Went to 'eaven straight, 'e did, 
if ever any one did. Wasn't 'alf glad 
ter go, neither. " I done my bit of 'ell, 
Jim," 'e sez to me, an' looked that 'appy 
you'd a' thought as 'e was well agin. 
Shan't never forget 'is face, I shan't. 
An' I'd sooner be that bloke, for all 'is 
sufferin's, than I'd be ole Fred 'ere, an' 
live to a 'undred. 

Bill (philosophically). You'm right, 
matey. This is a wale o' tears, as the 
'ymn sez, and them as is out on it is best 
off, if so be as they done their dooty in 
that state o' life . . . Where's the corfee, 
Jim ? The water's on the bile. 



THE FEAR OF DEATH IN WAR 



VII 

THE FEAR OF DEATH IN WAR 

I am not a psychologist, and I have not 
seen many people die in their beds ; but 
I think it is established that very few 
people are afraid of a natural death when 
it comes to the test. Often they are so 
weak that they are incapable of emotion. 
Sometimes they are in such physical pain 
that death seems a welcome deliverer. 
But a violent death such as death in 
battle is obviously a different matter. 
It comes to a man when he is in the full 
possession of his health and vigour, and 
when every physical instinct is urging 
him to self-preservation. If a man feared 
death in such circumstances one could not 
be surprised, and yet in the present war 
hundreds of thousands of men have gone 

123 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



to meet practically certain destruction 
without giving a sign of terror. 

The fact is that at the moment of a charge 
men are in an absolutely abnormal condi- 
tion. I do not know how to describe their 
condition in scientific terms ; but there 
is a sensation of tense excitement com- 
bined with a sort of uncanny calm. Their 
emotions seem to be numbed. Noises, 
sights, and sensations which would ordin- 
arily produce intense pity, horror, or 
dread, have no effect on them at all, and 
yet never was their mind clearer, their 
sight, hearing, etc., more acute. They 
notice all sorts of little details which 
would ordinarily pass them by, but which 
now thrust themselves on their attention 
with absurd definiteness — absurd because 
so utterly incongruous and meaningless. 
Or they suddenly remember with extra- 
ordinary clearness some trivial incident 
of their past life, hitherto unremembered, 
and not a bit worth remembering ! But 

124 



THE FEAR OF DEATH IN WAR 

with the issue before them, with victory 
or death or the prospect of eternity, their 
minds blankly refuse to come to grips. 
No ; it is not at the moment of a charge 
that men fear death. As in the case of 
those who die in bed, Nature has an 
anaesthetic ready for the emergency. It 
is before an attack that a man is more 
liable to fear — before his blood is hot, 
and while he still has leisure to think. 
The trouble may begin a day or two in 
advance, when he is first told of the attack 
which is likely to mean death to himself 
and so many of his chums. This part is 
comparatively easy. It is fairly easy to 
be philosophic if one has plenty of time. 
One indulges in regrets about the home 
one may never see again. One is rather 
sorry for oneself ; but such self-pity is not 
wholly unpleasant. One feels mildly 
heroic, which is not wholly disagreeable 
either. Very few men are afraid of death 
in the abstract. Very few men believe in 

125 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



hell, or are tortured by their consciences. 
They are doubtful about after death, 
hesitating between a belief in eternal 
oblivion and a belief in a new life under 
the same management as the present ; 
and neither prospect fills them with terror. 
If only one's " people " would be sensible, 
one would not mind. 

But as the hour approaches when the 
attack is due to be launched the strain 
becomes more tense. The men are pro- 
bably cooped up in a very small space. 
Movement is very restricted. Matches 
must not be struck. Voices must be 
hushed to a whisper. Shells bursting and 
machine guns rattling bring home the grim 
reality of the affair. It is then more than 
at any other time in an attack that a man 
has to " face the spectres of the mind," 
and lay them if he can. Few men care 
for those hours of waiting. 

Of all the hours of dismay that come to a 
soldier there are really few more trying to 
126 



THE FEAR OF DEATH IN WAR 

the-nerves than when he is sitting in a trench 
under heavy fire from high-explosive shells 
or bombs from trench mortars. You 
can watch these bombs lobbed up into the 
air. You see them slowly wobble down 
to earth, there to explode with a terrific 
detonation that sets every nerve in your 
body a- jangling. You can do nothing. 
You cannot retaliate in any way. You 
simply have to sit tight and hope for the 
best. Some men joke and smile ; but 
their mirth is forced. Some feign stoical 
indifference, and sit with a paper and a 
pipe ; but as a rule their pipes are out and 
their reading a pretence. There are few 
men, indeed, whose hearts are not beating 
faster, and whose nerves are not on edge. 
But you can't call this " the fear of 
death " ; it is a purely physical reaction 
of danger and detonation. It is not fear 
of death as death. It is not fear of hurt 
as hurt. It is an infinitely intensified 
dislike of suspense and uncertainty, sud- 

127 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



den noise and shock. It belongs wholly 
to the physical organism, and the only 
cure that I know is to make an act of 
personal dissociation from the behaviour 
of one's flesh. Your teeth may chatter 
and your knees quake, but as long as the 
real you disapproves and derides this 
absurdity of the flesh, the composite 
you can carry on. Closely allied to the 
sensation of nameless dread caused by 
high explosives is that caused by gas. 
No one can carry out a relief in the trenches 
without a certain anxiety and dread if he 
knows that the enemy has gas cylinders 
in position and that the wind is in the east. 
But this, again, is not exactly the fear of 
death ; but much more a physical reaction 
to uncertainty and suspense combined 
with the threat of physical suffering. 

Personally, I believe that very few men 
indeed fear death. The vast majority 
experience a more or less violent physical 
shrinking from the pain of death and 

128 



THE FEAR OF DEATH IN WAR 

wounds, especially when they are obliged 
to be physically inactive, and when they 
have nothing else to think about. This 
kind of dread is, in the case of a good 
many men, intensified by darkness and 
suspense, and by the deafening noise and 
shock that accompany the detonation of 
high explosives. But it cannot properly 
be called the fear of death, and it is a 
purely physical reaction which can be, 
and nearly always is, controlled by the 
mind. 

Last of all there is the repulsion and 
loathing for the whole business of war, 
with its bloody ruthlessness, its fiend- 
ish ingenuity, and its insensate cruelty, 
that comes to a man after a battle, 
when the tortured and dismembered 
dead lie strewn about the trench, and the 
wounded groan from No-Man's-Land. But 
neither is that the fear of death. It is a 
repulsion which breeds hot anger more 
often than cold fear, reckless hatred of life 
129 i 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



more often than abject clinging to it. 
jThe cases where any sort of fear, even 
for a moment, obtains the mastery of a 
man are very rare. [Sometimes in the case 
of a boy, whose nerves are more sensitive 
than a man's, and whose habit of self- 
control is less formed, a sudden shock 
will upset his mental balance. Sometimes 
a very egotistical man will succumb to 
danger long drawn out. The same applies 
to men who are very introspective. I 
have seen a man of obviously low intelli- 
gence break down on the eve of an attack. 
The anticipation of danger makes many 
men " windy," especially officers who are 
responsible for other lives than their own. 
But even where men are afraid it is 
generally not death that they fear. Their 
fear is a physical and instinctive shrinking 
from hurt, shock, and the unknown, which 
instinct obtains the mastery only through 
surprise, or through the exhaustion of 
the mind and will, or through a man being 

130 



THE FEAR OF DEATH IN WAR 

excessively self-centred. It is not the 
fear of death rationally considered ; but 
an irrational physical instinct which '; all 
men possess, but which almost all can 
control. 



131 



IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 



VIII 
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 

II 

Scene. A dug-out in a wood somewhere in 
Flanders. Officers at tea. 

Hancock. Damned glad to be out of 
that infernal firing trench, anyway. (A 
dull report is heard in the distance.) There 
goes another torpedo ! Wonder who's 
copt it this time ! 

Smith. For Christ's sake talk about 
something else ! 

Hancock (ignoring him). Are we com- 
ing back to the same trenches, sir ? 

Captain Dodd. 'Spect so. 

Hancock. At the present rate we shall 
last another two spells. I hate this sort 
of bisnay. You go on month after month 

135 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



losing fellows the whole time, and at the 
end of it you're exactly where you started. 
I wish they'd get a move on. 

Whiston. Tired of life ? 

Hancock. If you call this life, yes ! 
If this damned war is going on another 
two years, I hope to God I don't live to 
see the end of it. 

Smith. If ever I get home . . . ! 

Whiston. Well ? 

Smith. Won't I paint the town red, 
that's all ! 

Whiston. If ever I get home . . . 
well, I guess I'll go home. No more 
razzle-dazzle for master ! No, there's a 
little girl awaiting, and I know she thinks 
of me. Shan't wait any longer. 

Hancock (heavily). Don't think a 
chap's got any right to marry a girl under 
present circs. It's ten to one she's a 
widow before she's a mother. 

Smith. Oh, shut up ! 

Captain Dodd (gently). To some wo- 

136 



IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 

men the kid would be just the one thing 
that made life bearable. 

Hancock (reddening). Sorry, sir ; for- 
got you'd just done it. Course you're 
right. Depends absolutely on the girl. 

Captain Dodd. Thanks. I say, Whis- 
ton, I'm going down to B.H.Q. Care to 
come along ? 

(They go out together.) 

Scene. A path through a wood. Cap- 
tain Dodd and Whiston walking 
together, followed by a Lance-Cor- 
poral. 

Dodd. D'you believe in presentiments, 
Whiston ? 

Whiston (doubtfully). A year ago I 
should have laughed at you for asking. 
Now . . . 

Dodd. More things in heaven and 
earth . . . ? 

Whiston. My rationalism is always 
being upset '. 

137 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



Dodd. How exactly ? 

Whiston. For instance, I simply can't 
believe that old John is finished. Can 
you? 

Dodd (quietly). No. 

Whiston. Funny thing. As far as 
I'm concerned I can quite imagine myself 
just snuffing out. You can put one word 
on my grave, if I have one — '* Napu." 
But as for John, no. I want something 
else. Something about Death being scored 
off after all. 

Dodd. I know. " O Death, where is 
thy sting ? O Grave, where is thy vic- 
tory ? " 

Whiston. Just that. Mind you, I 
don't think I'm afraid of Death. I don't 
want to get killed. But if I saw him 
coming I think I could smile, and feel 
that after all he wasn't getting much of 
a bargain. But the idea of his getting 
old John sticks in my gullet. I believe 
in all sorts of things for him. Resurrec- 

138 



IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 

tion and life and Heaven, and all that. 

Dodd. What do you think about it, 
Corporal ? 

Lance-Corporal. Same as Mr. Whis- 
ton, sir. 

Whiston. But what about presenti- 
ments ? 

Dodd. Oh, I don't know. Funny 
thing ; but all through this fortnight 
I've been absolutely certain that I was 
not for it. 

Lance-Corporal. Beg pardon, sir, we 
noticed that, sir ! 

Whiston. Well, it's practically over 
now. 

Dodd. I'm not so sure. I'm not in 
a funk, you know. It's simply that I 
don't feel so sure. 

Whiston. Oh, rot, sir ! I don't be- 
lieve in that sort of presentiment. 

Dodd. What do you think, Corporal ? 

Lance-Corporal. I think you goes 
when your time comes, sir. But it won't 

139 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



come to-night, sir. Not after all we been 
through this spell, and the spell just 
finished. 

Dodd. I believe you're right, Cor- 
poral. We shall go when our time comes, 
and not before. I like that idea, you 
know. It means one hasn't got to worry. 

Whiston. If it means that you go on 
as you've done the last fortnight, it's a 
damnable doctrine, sir. You've no busi- 
ness to go taking unnecessary risks simply 
because you've got bitten by Mohamme- 
danism. 

Dodd (thoughtfully). You're right, too, 
Whiston. " Thou shalt not tempt the 
Lord thy God." One shouldn't take un- 
necessary risks. Mind you, I don't admit 
that I have. It just enables one to do 
one's job with a quiet mind, that's all. 

Two Days Later 
Scene. A billet. Hancock and Smith. 
Hancock. Damn ! 

140 



IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 

Smith. What's up ? Aren't you satis- 
fied ? The brigade's bound to go back 
and re-form now, and that means that we 
shan't be in the trenches for a couple of 
months at least. We may even go where 
there's a pretty girl or two. My word ! 

Hancock. Damnation ! 

Smith (genuinely astonished). What 
the hell's wrong ? Any one would think 
you liked the trenches ! Personally, I 
don't care if I never see them again. 
England's full of nice young, bright young 
things crying to get out. Let 'em all 
come ! They can have my job and wel- 
come ! 

Hancock (to himself). God ! Why 
Dodd and Whiston ? Why, why, why ? 
Why not me ? Why just the fellows we 
can't afford to lose ? 

Smith. Oh, for God's sake stow it t 
What the hell's the good of going on like 
that ? Of course I'm sorry for them and 
all that. But I don't see that it's going 

141 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



to help them to make oneself miserable 
about it. 

Hancock (fiercely). Sorry for them ! 
It's not them I'm sorry for ! They . . . 
they're the lucky ones ! God ! I suppose 
that's the answer ! They'd earned it ! 

Smith (satirically). Have you turned 
pi ? We shall have you saying the 
prayers that you learnt at your mother's 
knee next, I suppose ! I shall have to 
tell the Padre, and he'll preach a sermon 
about it ! I should never have thought 
you would have been frightened into 
religion ! 

Hancock. Frightened ! You little 
swine ! You talk about being frightened 
after last night ! I tell you I'd rather 
be lying out there with Dodd and Whiston 
than be sitting here with you. Fright- 
ened into religion ! 

Smith. Oh, I suppose you're the next 
candidate for death or glory ! Good luck 
to you ! I'm not competing. I'll do my 

142 



IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 

job ; but I'm not going to make a fool of 
myself. Dodd and Whiston deserved all 
they got. You're right there. You'll get 
what you deserve some day, I expect ! 
Don't look at me like that. I've said 
I'm sorry, and all that. But it's the 
truth I'm speaking, all the same. 

Hancock. And you'll get what you 
deserve too, I suppose, which is to live 
in your own company till the end of your 
miserable existence. I won't deprive you 
of your reward more than I can help, 
promise you 1 

(Hancock goes out.) 



143 



THE WISDOM OF 
"A STUDENT IN ARMS" 



K 



IX 

THE WISDOM OF " A STUDENT 
IN ARMS " 

It is no good trying to fathom " things " 
to the bottom ; they have not got 
one. 

Knowledge is always descriptive, and 
never fundamental. We can describe the 
appearance and conditions of a process ; 
but not the way of it. 

Agnosticism is a fundamental fact. It 
is the starting-point of the wise man who 
has discovered that it needs eternity to 
study infinity. 

Agnosticism, however, is no excuse for 
indolence. Because we cannot know all, 
we need not therefore be totally ignorant. 

147 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



The true wisdom is that in which all 
knowledge is subordinate to practical 
aims, and blended into a working philo- 
sophy of life. 

The true wisdom is that it is not what 
a man does, or has, or says, that matters ; 
but what he is. 

This must be the aim of practical philo- 
sophy — to make a man be somewhat. 

The world judges a man by his station, 
inherited or acquired. God judges by 
his character. To be our best we must 
share God's viewpoint. 

To the world death is always a tragedy ; 
to the Christian it is never a tragedy 
unless a man has been a contemptible 
character. 

Religion is the widening of a man's 
horizon so as to include God. 

It is in the nature of a speculation, but 
its returns are immediate. 

True religion means betting one's life 
that there is a God. 

148 



THE WISDOM OF " A STUDENT IN ARMS " 

Its immediate fruits are courage, sta- 
bility, calm, unselfishness, friendship, 
generosity, humility, and hope. 

Religion is the only possible basis of 
optimism. 

Optimism is the essential condition of 
progress. 

One is what one believes oneself to 
be. If one believes oneself to be an animal 
one becomes bestial ; if one believes one- 
self spiritual one becomes Divine. 

Faith is an effective force whose meas- 
ure has never yet been taken. 

Man is the creature of heredity and 
environment. He can only rise superior 
to circumstances by bringing God into 
environment of which he is conscious. 

The recognition of God's presence upsets 
the balance of a man's environment, and 
means a new birth into a new life. 

The faculties which perceive God in- 
crease with use like any other perceptive 
faculties. 

149 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



Belief in God may be an illusion ; 
but it is an illusion that pays. 

If belief in God is illusion, happy is 
he who is deluded ! He gains this world 
and thinks he will gain the next. 

The disbeliever loses this world, and 
risks losing the next. 

To be the centre of one's universe is 
misery. To have one's universe centred 
in God is the peace that passeth under- 
standing. 

Greatness is founded on inward peace. 

Energy is only effective when it springs 
from deep calm. 

The pleasure of life lies in contrasts ; 
the fear of contrasts is a chain that binds 
most men. 

In the hour of danger a man is proven. 
The boaster hides, and the egotist trem- 
bles. He whose care is for others forgets 
to be afraid. 

Men live for eating and drinking, passion 
and wealth. They die for honour. 

150 



THE WISDOM OF " A STUDENT IN ARMS " 

Blessed is he of whom it has been said 
that he so loved giving that he even 
gave his own life. 



151 



IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 



X 

IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 

III 

Scene. A trench unpleasantly near the 
firing line. There has been an hour's 
intense bombardment by the British, 
with suitable retaliation by the Boches. 
The retaliation is just dying down. 

Characters. A.lbert — Round-eyed, ro- 
tund, red-cheeked, yellow-haired, and, 
deliberate ; in civil life probably a 
drayman. Jim — Small, lean, sallow, 
grey-eyed, with a kind of quiet restless- 
ness ; in civil life probably a mechanic 
with leanings towards Socialism. 
Pozzie — A thick-set, low-browed, im- 
passive, silent country youth, with a 

155 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



face the colour of the soil. Jinks — 
An old soldier, red, lean, wrinkled, 
with very blue eyes. His face is rough- 
Jiewn, almost grotesque like a gargoyle. 
In his eyes there is a perpetual glint 
of humour, and in the poise of his 
head a certain irrepressible jauntiness. 

Albert (whose eyes are more staring 
than ever, his cheeks pendulous and crim- 
son, his general air thai of a partly deflated 
air-cushion). Gawd's truth ! 

Jinks (wagging his head). Well, my 
old sprig o' mint, what's wrong wi' you ? 

Albert. It ain't right. (Senteniiously) 
It's agin natur'. Flesh an' blood weren't 
made for this sort o' think. 

Jim. It ain't flesh an' blood that can't 
stand it. It's Mind. Look at old Pozzie. 
*E's flesh an' blood, and don't turn an 
'air ! For myself I'll go potty one o' 
these days. 

Jinks (slapping Pozzie on the back). 

156 



IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 

You don't take no notice, do you, old 
lump o' duff ? 

Pozzie. Oi woulden moind if I got 
moy rations ; but a chap can't keep a 
good 'eart if 'e's got an empty stum- 
mick. 

Jim (sarcastically). You keep yer 'eart 
in yer stomach, don't yer ? You ain't 
got no mind, you ain't. Jinks was born 
potty, an' the rest of us'll all go potty 
except you. It's you an' yer Ally Sloper's 
Cavalry what'll win the war, I don't 
think ! 

Albert. What I wants ter know is 
'ow long the bleedin' war's a-goin' ter 
last. If it goes on much longer I'll be 
potty if I ain't a gone 'un. 

Jim. There's only one way of ending 
it as I knows on. 

Albert. What's that, matey ? 

Jim. Put all the bleedin' politicians 
on both sides in the bleedin' trenches. 
Give 'em a week's bombardment, an' 
157 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



send 'em away for a week to make peace, 
with a promise of a fortnight's intense at 
the end of it if they've failed. They'd 
find a way, sure enough. 

Albert (admiringly). Ah, that they 
would an' all. If old " Wait and See " 
'ad been 'ere these last four days 'e 
wouldn't talk about fightin' to the last 
man ! 

Jinks. Don't talk stoopid. 'Oo be- 
gan the bloomin' war ? Don't yer know 
what you're fightin' for ? D'you want 
ter leave the 'Uns in France an' Belgium 
an' Serbia an' all ? It ain't fer us to 
make peace. It's fer the 'Uns. An' if 
you are done in, you got to go under 
some day. I ain't sure as they ain't the 
lucky ones what's got it over and done 
with. And arter all, it's not us what's 
not proper. The 'Uns 'ave 'ad two fer 
our one. 

Albert. They got dug-outs as deep 
as 'ell, it don't touch 'em. 

158 



IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 

Jinks (but without conviction). Don't 
talk silly. 

Pozzie. Oi reckon we got to go through 
with it. But they didn't ought to give 
a chap short rations. That's what takes 
the 'eart out of a chap. 



159 



LETTER TO AN ARMY 
CHAPLAIN 



XI 

LETTER TO AN ARMY CHAPLAIN 1 

April 17, 1916. 
Thank you very much for your letter 
of a week ago, which I should have tried 
to answer before if I had had time. I 
am afraid that your confidence in me as 
an oracle will be severely shaken when I 
confess that I was once on the eve of being 
ordained, and that in the end I funked it 
because it seemed such an awfully diffi- 
cult job, and I couldn't see my way to 
going through with it. 

However, I must try to answer your 
letter as best I can, and I hope that you 
will not mind my speaking plainly what 

a This chapter is the actual text of a letter from 
" A Student in Arms," and like the most of the 
other chapters appeared originally in the Spectator. 
163 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



I think, and will remember that I do so 
in no spirit of superiority, but very humbly, 
as one who has funked the great work 
that you have had the pluck to take up, 
and who has even failed in the little bit 
of work that he himself did try and do. 
This last means that I have no business 
to be an officer. It was the biggest mis- 
take in my life, for my position in the 
ranks did give me a hold on the fellows, 
the strength of which I have only realized 
since I left. 

Now then to the point. As I under- 
stand you, your difficulty is that you 
feel that you must devote yourself to 
strengthening a very few men who are 
already Churchmen, and to whom you 
can talk in the language of the Church 
of things which you know they want to 
hear about, or you must appeal to the 
crowd of those who are merely good 
fellows and often sad scamps too, who 
must be caught with buns and cinemas 

164 



LETTER TO AN ARMY CHAPLAIN 

and who are very difficult to get any 
farther. 

I fancy that you, like me, when you 
see a fine dashing young fellow, with a 
touch of honesty and recklessness and 
wonderful mystery of youth in his eyes, 
love him as a brother, and long to do 
something to keep him clean, and to keep 
him from the sordid things to which you and 
I know well enough he will descend in the 
long run if one cannot put the love of clean, 
wholesome life into his heart. But how to 
get at him ? If you talk to him about his 
soul you disgust him, and you feel a sort 
of sneaking sympathy with him too. It 
does not seem the thing to make a chap 
self-conscious and a bit of a prig when he 
is not one to start with. On the other 
hand, if you just keep to buns and cinemas 
you never get any farther. Well, it is a 
big difficulty. The only experience that 
I have had which counts at all is experi- 
ence that I gained while trying to run a 
165 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



boys' club in South London, and you 
must not think me egotistical if I tell you 
what seems to me to have been the secret 
of any power that I seem to have had over 
fellows. 

At first I used to have a short service 
at the close of the club every evening, to 
which most of the boys used to stay. I 
also had a service on Sunday afternoon. 
Something of the same sort might perhaps 
be possible in the Y.M.C.A. tent if there is 
one where you are. When I was talking 
to them at these services I always used 
to try and make them feel that Christ 
was the fulfilment of all the best things 
that they admired, that He was their 
natural hero. I would tell them some 
story of heroism and meanness contrasted, 
of courage and cowardice, of noble for- 
giveness and vile cruelty, and so get them 
on the side of the angels. Then I would 
try and spring it upon them that Christ 
was the Lord of the heroes and the brave 

166 



LETTER TO AN ARMY CHAPLAIN 

men and the noble men, and that He was 
fighting against all that was mean and 
cruel and cowardly, and that it was up 
to them to take their stand by His side 
if they wanted to make the world a little 
better instead of a little worse, and I would 
try to show them how in little practical 
ways in their homes and at their work and 
in the club they could do a bit for Christ. 
Well, they listened pretty well, and I 
think that they agreed in a general sort of 
way, only they knew that I was a richish 
man in comparison with them, and that 
I didn't have their difficulties to contend 
with, and that all tended to undo the 
effect of what I had said. And then 
accident gave me a sort of clue to the 
way to get them to take one seriously. 
For some idiotic reason — I really couldn't 
say just what it was — I dressed up as a 
tramp one day, and spent a night in a 
casual ward. I didn't do it for any very 
worthy motive, and I didn't mean any 

167 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



one to know about it ; but it got round, 
and I suddenly found that it had caught 
the imaginations of some of the fellows, 
and I realized that if one was to have 
any power over them one must do sym- 
bolic things to show them that one meant 
what one said about love being really 
better than money, and all that sort of 
thing. So in rather a half-hearted way I 
did try to do things which would show them 
that I was in earnest. I took a couple of 
rooms in a little cottage in a funny little bug- 
ridden court, instead of living at the 
mission-house. I went out to Australia 
steerage to see why emigration of London 
boys was not a success, and when war 
broke out I enlisted, although I had 
previously held a commission. And all 
these little things, though on reasonable 
grounds often rather indefensible, un- 
doubtedly had the effect of making my 
South London boys take me more seri- 
ously than they did at first. Well, I am 

168 



LETTER TO AN ARMY CHAPLAIN 

quite sure that with Tommies, if ever you 
get a chance of doing something in the 
way of sharing their privations and dan- 
gers when you aren't obliged to, or of 
showing in practical ways humility and 
unselfishness, that will endear you to them, 
and give you weight with them more than 
anything else. In my time in the ranks 
I had that proved over and over again. 
If once I was able to do even a small kind- 
ness for a fellow which involved a bit of 
unnecessary trouble, he would never for- 
get it, and would repay me a thousand 
times over. I was a sergeant for about 
nine months in England, and had one or 
two chances. Then I reverted to the 
ranks, and for that the men could not do 
enough to show me kindness. (It was 
my not valuing rank and comparative 
comfort for its own sake that appealed 
to them.) Continually I have reaped a 
most gigantic reward of goodwill for 
actions which cost very little, and which 
169 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



were not always done from the motives 
imputed. 

I am not swanking — at least, I don't 
mean to — but that is just my experience, 
that with Tommy it is actions, and speci- 
ally actions that imply and symbolize 
humility, courage, unselfishness, etc., that 
count ten thousand times more than the 
best sermons in the world. I am afraid 
that all this is not much good because 
you are an officer, and your course of 
action is very clearly marked out for you 
by authority. But I do say that if ever 
you have a chance of showing that you 
are willing to share the often hard and 
sometimes humiliating lot of the men it 
is that which above all things will give 
you power with them ; just as it is the 
Cross of Christ, and the spitting and the 
mocking and the scourging, and the de- 
gradation of His exposure in dying, that 
gives Him His power far more than even 
the Sermon on the Mount. After all, it 

170 



LETTER TO AN ARMY CHAPLAIN 

is always what costs most that is best 
worth having, and if you only see Tommy 
in his easiest moments, when he is at the 
Y.M.C.A. or the club, you see him at the 
time when he is least impressionable in a 
permanent manner. 

Well, I must apologize for writing such 
an egotistical and intimate sort of letter 
on so slight a provocation. But this 
that I have said is all that my experience 
has taught me about influencing the 
Tommy. No doubt there are other ways ; 
but I have not been able to strike them. 
Yours very truly, 
Donald Hankey, 2nd Lieut. 

P.S. — Of course in becoming a Second 
Lieutenant I have dished my own influ- 
ence most effectually. It has often ap- 
peared to me that among ordinary work- 
ing men humility was considered the 
Christian virtue par excellence. Humility 
combined with love is so rare, I suppose, 

and that is why it is marvelled at. 
171 



"DON'T WORRY 



XII 

"DON'T WORRY" 

This is at present the soldier's favourite 
chorus at the front — 

" What's the use of worrying ? 
It never was worth while ! 
Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag, 
And Smile, Smile, Smile ! " 

Not a bad chorus, either, for the trenches ! 
You can't stop a shell from bursting in 
your trench, even if Mr . Rawson can ! 
You can't stop the rain, or prevent a 
light from going up just as you are half- 
way over the parapet ... so what on 
earth is the use of worrying ? If you can't 
alter things, you must accept them, and 
make the best of them. 

Yet some men do worry, and by so 
175 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



doing effectually destroy their peace of 
mind without doing any one any good. 
What is worse, it is often the religious 
man who worries. I have even heard 
those whose care was for the soldier's 
soul, deplore the fact that he did not 
worry ! I have heard it said that the 
soldier is so careless, realizes his position 
so little, is so hard to touch ! And, on 
the other hand, I have heard the soldier 
say that he did not want religion, because 
it would make him worry. Strange, isn't 
it, if Christianity means worry and anxiety, 
and if it is only the heathen who is cheer- 
ful and free from care ? Yet the feeling 
that this is so undoubtedly exists, and 
it must have some foundation. Perhaps 
it is one of the subjects which ought to 
engage the attention of Churchmen in 
these days of " repentance and hope." 

Of course, worrying is about as un- 
christian as anything can be. " m 
fiepLfjuvare rfj ^v^r) v/xoiv " — "Don't worry 

176 



DON'T WORRY" 



about your life" — is the Master's ex- 
press command. In fact, the call of 
Christ is a call to something very like 
the cheerfulness of the soldier in the 
trenches. It is a call to a life of external 
turmoil and internal peace. " I came 
not to bring peace, but a sword ; " " take 
up your cross and follow Me; " " ye shall 
be hated;" "he that would save his life 
shall lose it." It is a call to take risks, 
to risk poverty, unpopularity, humilia- 
tion, death. It is a call to follow the 
way of the Cross. But the way of the 
Cross is also the way of peace, the peace 
of God that passeth understanding. It 
is a way of freedom from all cares, and 
anxieties, and fears ; but not a way of 
escape from them. 

Yet worrying is often a feature of the 
actual Churchman. The actual Church- 
man is often a man whose conscience is 
an incubus. He can do nothing without 
weighing motives and calculating results. 
177 k 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



It makes him introspective to an extent 
that is positively morbid. He is con- 
tinually probing himself to discover 
whether his motives are really pure and 
disinterested, continually trying to de- 
cide whether he is " worthy " or " fit " 
to undertake this or that responsibility, 
or to face this or that eventuality. He 
is full of suspicion of himself, of self- 
distrust. In the trenches he is always 
wondering whether he is fit to die, whether 
he will acquit himself worthily in a crisis, 
whether he has done anything that he 
ought not to have done, or left undone 
anything that he ought to have done. 
Especially if he is an officer, his responsi- 
bility weighs on him terribly, and I have 
known more than one good fellow and 
conscientious Churchman worry himself 
into thinking that he was unfit for his 
responsibilities as an officer, and ask to 
be relieved of them. 

There must be something wrong about 
178 



"DON'T WORRY" 



the Christianity of such men. Their 
over-conscientiousness seems to create a 
wholly wrong sense of proportion, an 
exaggerated sense of the significance of 
their own actions and characters which 
is as fay removed as can be from the child- 
like humility which Christ taught. The 
truth seems to be that we lay far too 
much stress on conscience, self-examina- 
tion, and personal salvation, and that 
we trust the Holy Spirit far too little. 
If we look to the teaching of Christ, we 
do not find any recommendation to meti- 
culous self-analysis, but rather we are 
taught a kind of spiritual recklessness, 
an unquestioning confidence in what seem 
to be right impulses, and that quite regard- 
less of results. We are not told to be care- 
ful to spend each penny to the best ad- 
vantage ; but we are told that if our 
money is preventing us from entering 
the Kingdom, we had better give it all 
away. We are not told to set a high 
179 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



value on our lives, and to spend them 
with care for the good of the Kingdom. 
On the contrary, we are told to risk our 
lives recklessly if we would preserve 
them. A sense of anxious responsibility 
is discouraged. If our limbs cause us 
to offend, we are advised to cut them off. 

The whole teaching of the Gospels is 
that we have got to find freedom and 
peace in trusting ourselves implicitly to 
the care of God. We have got to follow 
what we think right quite recklessly, 
and leave the issue to God ; and in judg- 
ing between right and wrong we are only 
given two rules for our guidance. Every- 
thing which shows love for God and love 
for man is right, and everything which 
shows personal ambition and anxiety is 
wrong. 

What all this means as far as the 

trenches are concerned is extraordinarily 

clear. The Christian is advised not to 

be too pushing or ambitious. He is ad- 

180 



DON'T WORRY" 



vised to " take the lowest room." But 
if he is told to move up higher, he has 
got to go. If he is given responsibility, 
there is no question of refusing it. He 
has got to do his best and leave the issue 
to God. If he does well, he will be given 
more responsibility. But there is no need 
to worry. The same formula holds good 
for the new sphere. Let him do his best 
and leave the issue to God. If he does 
badly, well, if he did his best, that means 
that he was not fit for the job, and he 
must be perfectly willing to take a hum- 
bler job, and do his best at that. 

As for personal danger, he must not 
think of it. If he is killed, that is a 
sign that he is no longer indispensable. 
Perhaps he is wanted elsewhere. The 
enemy can only kill the body, and the 
body is not the important thing about 
him. Every man who goes to war must, 
if he is to be happy, give his body, a 
living sacrifice, to God and his country. 
181 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



It is no longer his. He need not worry 
about it. The peace of God which 
passeth all understanding simply comes 
from not worrying about results because 
they are God's business and not ours, 
and in trusting implicitly all impulses 
that make for love of God and man. 
Few of us perhaps will ever attain to a 
full measure of such faith ; but at least 
we can make sure that our " Christianity " 
brings us nearer to it. 



182 



IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 



XIII 

IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 

IV 

AU COIFFEUR 

Scene. A barber's shop in a small French 
town about thirty miles from the front. 
A Subaltern and a stout Bour- 
geois are waiting their turn. 
Bourgeois. Is it that it is the mud oi 
the trenches on the boots of monsieur ? 

Subaltern. Ah ! but no, monsieur, 
for then it would reach to my waist ! 

Bourgeois. Nevertheless, monsieur is 
but recently come from the trenches, is 
it not so ? 

Subaltern. Yes, I am arrived from 
the trenches yesterday. 

Bourgeois. Then monsieur has as- 
sisted at the great attack ! 
185 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



Subaltern. Oh, yes, I helped a very 
little bit. 

Bourgeois. There have been immense 
losses, is it not so ? 

Subaltern (vaguely). There are al- 
ways great losses when one attacks. 

Bourgeois. Ah ! but much greater 
than one expected — I have seen, I, the 
wounded coming down the river. 

Subaltern. I — I have always ex- 
pected great losses. 

Bourgeois. 'Tis true. There are al- 
ways great losses when one attacks. But 
all goes well, monsieur, is it not so ? 

Subaltern. It is difficult to estimate 
the success of an attack until after several 
weeks. But I think that all goes well. 

Bourgeois. But yes, the French, they 
have had a great success, and also the 
English. The English are wonderful. 
Their equipment ! It is that which as- 
tonishes me. Everything is complete. 
They say that the English have saved 
186 



IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 

France ; but the French also, they have 
saved England, is it not so, monsieur ? 

Subaltern. But we are saving each 
other ! 

Bourgeois. Good ! We are saving 
each other ! Very good ! But after the 
war, monsieur, England will fight against 
France, hein ? 

Subaltern. Never ! 

Bourgeois. Never ? 

Subaltern. Never in life ! 

Bourgeois. You think so ? 

Subaltern. We do not love war. We 
do not seek war. It is only when a nation 
is so execrable that one is compelled to 
fight, as have been the Germans, that we 
make war. 

Bourgeois. You do not love war, 
eh ? Before the war you had a very 
small Army, about three hundred thou- 
sand, is it not so ? And now you have 
about three million. You do not love 
war, you others. 

187 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



Subaltern. The Germans thought 
that they loved war, but I do not believe 
that they will love it very much longer ! 

Bourgeois. No ! The war will give 
them the stomach-ache. They will love 
it no longer ! 

Coiffeur. But these English, whom 
did they fight before? The Boers, was 
it not ? 

Subaltern. Yes, but a great many 
English think now that it was a betise. 
There was also great provocation. And 
nevertheless, who knows if there was not 
in that affair also a German plot ? 

Bourgeois. It is very likely. Then 
monsieur thinks that we are true friends, 
the English and the French ? 

Subaltern. But yes, monsieur, be- 
cause we love, both of us, liberty and 
peace. 



188 



IDYLLS OF THE WAR 



XIV 

IDYLLS OF THE WAR 

" June, 1916. 
" We have done a move, and my juvenile 
Captain (popularly known as Boots x ) and 
forty men and myself are in another 
village. We (Boots and I) are lodging 
chez M. Le Cure, and messing with the 
' Town Major.' Boots finds it rather a 
strain to be living with three such heavy 
old things (myself the third). He is an 
awfully good fellow, a very keen and 
efficient soldier, and bubbling over with 
youthful spirits at the same time. He 
has been out since September, 1914. He 

resembles in being very much of a 

sport, a sound chap at bottom, and a bit 
spoilt by having too much money and too 
few relations. I am rather amused here ! 

1 Since dead. 
191 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



But I fear he is rather bored. The Town 
Major is a Terrier, a Birmingham chartered 
accountant, and interesting as well as well 
informed. The Cure is a cheerful person 
with beautiful roses and no books. How 
unlike an English vicar ! " 

"July, 1916. 
" I have taken a very small part in a very 
big battle, and am very ragged (owing to 
the prevalence of wire everywhere). I was 
in charge of the ration and ammunition 
carriers, and the only part of the battle 
that I saw was when I had to carry bombs 
to a party of British who were trying to 
hang on to a corner of the Boche front line. 
The scene was more like one of Caton 
Woodville's battle pictures than I had 
thought possible. An irregular mound, 
held by a wild mixture of men from all 
sorts of regiments, broken wire, dead, 
wounded, bombs, machine-guns, shell- 
holes, confusion, smoke. Unfortunately, 

192 



IDYLLS OF THE WAR 



just here the attack was a failure, though I 
hear it was successful elsewhere. For- 
tunately, the failure was assured before 
my battalion was called into action. Our 
losses were very slight ; in fact, I who was 
not in the fighting part, was, as a matter of 
fact, the only officer of my company to set 
foot in a German trench. Now we are 
clearing up, which is the worst part — bury- 
ing dead, trying to fetch in wounded, etc. 
War is bad, I agree with Jim in the 
enclosed ' conversation.' ... I never 
realized before this week what an awful 
thing war is. It may be good for a man 
and a nation, but it is none the less wholly 
evil in itself." 

" July, 1916. 
" As I think I told you yesterday, my ad- 
dress is now , B.E.F., France. A more 

complete contrast to my recent quarters it 
is difficult to imagine. We mess in a corner 
of an immense flamboyant chateau, in 

193 n 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



whose c extensive ' grounds I am now 
writing. We are far from the sound of 
guns. We live on the fat of the land. We 
<jan go for week-ends to the neighbouring 
towns. Yesterday I went to a place called 

. I suppose I mustn't say, but it is on 

a river whose name you will have seen in 
the papers lately, and has a small Cathe- 
dral, quite a lot of goodish shops, cafes, 
and two passable hotels. I got a pair of 
breeches, a walking-stick, a haircut, some 
books, and had a ' Cassis-Vermouth ' be- 
fore and a bottle of ' Mercury ' at dinner, 
in memory of Faucogney. I also met an 

Oxford Don named , who is Military 

Chaplain there and was dining at the ' Hotel 
Tete de Boeuf.' I don't know how long I 
shall be here, but it will probably be three 
or four weeks. The course will probably 
be highly irritating ; but I confess that 
after the last few weeks I don't think I 
shall complain." 



194 



IDYLLS OF THE WAR 



"July, 1916. 
" Life continues to be very peaceful here. 
We are just going out for a few days' rest. 
I have returned to the company after my 
few days' absence, and find everything 
much changed for the better. My com- 
pany commander is an old Rugbeian and 
Corpus. 1 He is absurdly young, being, I 
suppose, about twenty-two ; but months 
out here have aged him prematurely, and 
he is a good officer and a good fellow. It 
is one of the pities of war that so many 
boys do get robbed of their youth by pre- 
mature responsibilities." 

"August, 1916. 
" Picture to yourself a deep, wide railway 
cutting spanned by a great ruinous arch. 
The bottom is half flooded, and the water 
lies there in stagnant pools, with here and 
there the end of a twisted rail raised into 
the air. On either side of the cutting are 

1 Since dead. 
195 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



heaps of debris — all that remains of former 
farms, clusters of broken, blackened stumps 
— all that remains of former copses. The 
soil is everywhere ploughed up by shells 
into heaps and holes. Away in the dis- 
tance are still green trees and fields, 
glimpses of a great lake, and, half framed 
in a rainbow, which is also reflected in 
the pools at the bottom of the cutting, is a 
tall ruined tower, noble and ancient. The 
sun catches it, and it is all glistening and 
white, like the white spirit of a martyr 
raising his innocent hands to God in pro- 
test against outrage and mutilation, or 
like a spire of the heavenly city seen from 
the valley of desolation. That is where 
I was this morning, and where I shall be 
again very soon. At the moment I am in 
a small and somewhat louse-ridden dug- 
out, resting. My door opens on to one 
of the main thoroughfares of the neighbour- 
hood, which is about a foot and a half wide 
and very muddy." 

196 



IDYLLS OF THE WAR 



" August, 1916. 
" We have just had a very merry time 
in the trenches, with lots of trench mortar 
bombs, snipers, mines, etc., and are very 
pleased to have got out without a casualty 
in the Company. Well, that is not quite 
accurate, as my orderly got half buried 
by debris from a mine, and was badly 
enough bruised to go sick. It was really 
a most weird sight. In the small hours 
of the morning it went up. It was ours, 
and we were expecting quite a small affair, 
only destined to wreck hostile galleries, 
and we were watching for it from the 
opposite side of a deep ravine. Sud- 
denly an enormous chunk of the opposite 
side of the ravine lifted itself up, and 
came over upon us in a great sheet of 
earth, leaving a huge cavity like half a 
bowl in the side of the cliff opposite. It 
was very lucky that no one was seriously 
hurt. Now we are resting for a couple of 
days in a camp. The huts were built, I 

197 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



believe, by the Canadians. All the roofs 
leak, and our mess hut has no door and a 
large hole in the wall. It is pouring with 
rain and blowing hard. We also have a 
tent to sleep in. It is quite rotten, and 
looks like a second-hand purchase from 
Isaacs or Moses. Half the ropes have 
gone, there are no proper tent pegs, the 
roof is full of holes, and no attempt has 
been made to drain the ground ! . . . As 
a matter of fact, one gets extraordinarily 
indifferent out here to wet, provided it is 
not also cold. When one is living in the 
semi-open air it does not seem to do any 
harm. ... I have come to the con- 
clusion that my ■ anatomy of courage ' in 
my published works is inadequate ! Very 
largely it is a purely physical matter which 
a man can't help, and in many cases the 
nerves get worn rather than hardened by 
use. I find this myself to some extent. 
My nerves are not as good as they were 
last year. ' The flesh is weak,' as St. Paul 

198 



IDYLLS OF THE WAR 



says, doesn't he ? But the cure is to dis- 
sociate oneself personally from the flesh 
by an act of the will. Your teeth may 
chatter and your knees quake, but as long 
as the real you disapproves and derides 
this absurdity of the flesh, the composite 
you can carry on. I still wish I was a 
Tommy, but I no longer think I ought to 
be one still. The officer has the heavier 
burden, and there are so few who are 
naturally fit to bear it that I don't feel 
too inadequate by comparison." 



" September 9 1916. 

" We had a jolly little dinner last night 
at a French restaurant, and some very 
excellent Chambertin, so you see we are 
not quite out of civilization. We are 
giving a dinner to-night, of which the 
menu will be : — 



199 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



Hors d'oeuvre varies. 

Puree de Tomates. 

Langue de Boeuf braise. 

Epinards a la Francaise. 

Bifteck. Choux-fleurs. 

Pommes de terre f rites. 

Macedoine de fruits. 

Anges a cheval. 

Melon — Mendiants. 

Cafe. 

Margaux — Porto — Curacoa. 

This served on two dishes, an oilcloth table- 
cloth, in a room of which three walls are 
mud and one is wood, and which has one 
window with and one without glass, and 
one half and half, and whose furniture 
consists of home-made wooden stools and 
a table, ought to be rather effective ! The 
light will be afforded by two dips stuck in 
the mouths of bottles. However, it is a 
good dinner ! " 

"September, 1916. 
" We are still at peace ; though I am 
hoping that we may get a scrap before the 
200 



IDYLLS OF THE WAR 



winter. It would be very horrible to slide 
squalidly into the winter without any 
excitement at all. From all accounts, 
things are going very well now, in spite 
of the Hun having collected all the guns, 
etc., that he can on the threatened part 
of the front. How they do hate us ! 
Every day in French and English papers 
you can see the signs of it. It is difficult 
to believe that the war will heal the nations. 
I should not be surprised if when we are 
old we see a repetition of this war. I say 
' when we are old ' because I have little 
doubt that it will take most of our life- 
time (if we survive the war) for the belli- 
gerent nations to recover their strength. 
But I have little doubt that if, as seems 
likely, we beat the Hun badly, he will start 
the moment peace is signed to prepare for 
his revenge. A depressing thought, isn't 
it ? Also I doubt if we shall have such a 
horror of war as lots of people think. The 
rising generation won't know what we 

201 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



know, and we shall forget much that is bad. 
When a soldier can write that the brother- 
hood of the trenches will be ■ a wistful 
radiant memory ' now, what shall we be 
writing twenty years hence ? " 

" September, 1916. 

" In the course of our wanderings — that 
have now lasted some ten days — we have 
at last reached a most charming town, 
where I have bought peaches, fresh figs, 
delicious grapes, bananas, etc., and had 
some admirable ' moulin a vent ' with my 
dinner ! So am feeling very ' content.' 
Also I have a charming little bedroom with 
real sheets, etc. ! It is really quite a small 
place, but it has a church with a superficial 
resemblance to Westminster Abbey, and 
another little one with the most glorious 
old bas-relief of the triumphal entry of our 
Saviour into Jerusalem, as fine as anything 
I have ever seen. This doesn't sound like 

202 



IDYLLS OF THE WAR 



war, does it ? More like a Continental 
tour ! But I fancy it is leading up to 
fresh activity. Tant mieux ! I would 
like a scrap before winter." 



203 



A PASSING IN JUNE, 1915 



XV 

A PASSING IN JUNE, 1915 
PROLOGUE 

Scene. The parlour of an Auberge. 

Persons. A stout motherly Madame, a 
wrinkled fatherly Monsieur, and a 
plain but pleasant Ma'mselle. Some 
English soldiers drinking. Cecil is 
talking in French to Monsieur, and 
they are all very friendly. 
Madame. Alors, vous n'avez pas en- 
core ete aux tranehees ? 

Cecil. Mais non, Madame, peut-etre 
ce soir. 

(Monsieur and Madame exchange glances. 
Cecil rises to go.) 
Cecil. A Jeudi, Monsieur, Mad me, 
Ma'mselle. 

207 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



Monsieur, Madame, and Ma'mselle 
(in chorus). A Jeudi, Monsieur. 

Madame (earnestly). Bon courage, 
Monsieur ! 

(Curtain.) 

ACT I. DAWN 

Cecil is discovered lying behind a wall of 
sandbags. On one side are the sand- 
bags, and on the other an idyllic 
Spring scene, with flowers and orchards 
seen in the half light of a Spring morn- 
ing. The dawn breaks gently, and 
soon bullets begin to ping through the 
air, flattening themselves against the 
sandbags, or passing over Cecil's 
head. He wakes and yawns, and then 
composes himself with his eyes open. 

Enter Allegorical personages : Father 
Sun, Mother Earth, and a chorus 
of Grasses, Poppies, Cornflowers, 
Ragged Robins, Daisies, Beetles, 
Bees, Flies, and insects of all kinds. 

208 



A PASSING IN JUNE, 1915 



Father Sun. 

Wake, children, rub your eyes, 
Up and dance and sing and play, 
Not a cloud is in the skies ; 
This is going to be my day. 
See the tiny dew-drop glisten 
In my glancing golden ray ; 
See the shadows dancing, listen 
To the lark so blithe and gay. 
Up, children, dance and play, 
This is my own festal day. 
Flowers, Beetles, etc. 
Dance and sing 
In a ring, 
Naughty clouds are chased away ; 
Oh what fun, 
Father Sun 
Is going to shine the whole long 
day. 

Mother Earth. That's right, chil- 
dren. This is the day to grow in ; but 
don't forget to come home to dinner ; 
I've got such a nice dinner for you. 

209 o 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



(The children dance away delightedly, while 
Cecil watches them, fascinated.) 
Mother Earth. What's this absurd 
young man doing, sitting behind that 
ugly wall ? Why don't he sit under a 
tree if he must sit ? 

Father Sun. Oh, he's a lunatic ! 
Must be. 

(Random Bullet jumps over the sandbags 

into the dug-out, and jibbers impo- 

tenfly at Cecil, who glances up at 

him with a look of disgust.) 

Random Bullet. Ping ! Ping ! It's 

me he's afraid of. He daren't stir a yard 

from this wall, or I'd tear his brains out. 

Ping ! Ping ! 

Mother Earth. Who are you, Mon- 
ster ? 

Random Bullet. I'm Random Bullet. 
I am a monster, I am ! Ping ! 

Mother Earth. Who sent you, any- 
way ? 

Random Bullet. Why, the idiots be- 
210 



A PASSING IN JUNE, 1915 



hind the other wall, over there ! Some- 
times I jump at them, and sometimes I 
jump over here. I don't care which way 
it is ; but I like tearing their brains out, 
I do. I don't care which lot it is. 

Mother Earth. What madness ! 

Father Sun (indignantly). On my 
day too ! 

Random Bullet. Mad ! I should 
think they were ! Never mind, they give 
me some fun ! Ping ! So long, I'm off, 
going to jump at the other fellows, back 
in a second if you like to wait. 
(Random Bullet jumps out of sight, and 
Mother Earth and Father Sun 
move disgustedly away.) 

Cecil (getting up). Mad ! By God, we 
are mad ! Curse the war ! Curse the 
fools who started it ! Why did I ever 
come out here ? What a way to spend 
a morning in June ! 



(Curtain.) 

211 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



ACT II. MIDDAY 

Scene. The same. Cecil as before, but 
sweltering in the sun. Enter the 
Spirit of Thirst. 
Thirst. Oh for a drink ! Water, any- 
thing ! I could drink a bath full. What 
a place to spend a June day in ! When 
one thinks of all the drinks one might 
be having, it is really infuriating. Gad ! 
The very thought of 'em makes me feel 
quite poetic ! Think of the great barrels 
of still cider in cool Devonshire cellars ! 
Think of the sour refreshing wine we used 
to get in Italy ! And the iced cocktails 
of Colombo ! And Pimm's No. 1 in the 
City. Anywhere but here it's a pleasure 
to be a Thirst ; but here ! Good Lord, 
it will send me off my head. How would 
a bath go now, old chap ? By God, 
don't you wish you were back on your 
canoe, drawn up among the rushes near 
Islip, and you just going to plunge into 

212 



A PASSING IN JUNE, 1915 



the cool waters of the Char ? Or think 
of that day you bathed in the deep still 
pool at the foot of the Tamarin Falls, 
with the water crashing down above 
you, into the deep shady chasm. Even 
a dip in the sea at Mount Lavinia wouldn't 
be bad now, — or, better still, a dive into 
Como from a row boat ; you remember 
that hot summer we went to Como ? I'll 
tell you another thing that wouldn't go 
down badly either. Do you remember 
a great bowl of strawberries and cream 
with a huge ice in it, that you had the 
day before you left school, after that hot 
bike ride to Leamington ? Not bad, was 
it? 

Cecil (fiercely). Shut up, you beast ! 
Oh, curse this idiotic war ! Why are we 
such fools ? 



(Curtain.) 



213 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



ACT III. LATE AFTERNOON 

Scene. As before. Cecil is discovered 
reading a letter from home. 

Cecil (to himself). Tom dead. Good 
Lord ! What times we have had to- 
gether ! Where are all the good fellows 
I used to know ? Half of them dead, and 
the rest condemned to die ! No more 
yachting on the broads ! No more con- 
vivial evenings at the Troc. ! No more 
long nights spinning yarns in Tom's old 
rooms in the Temple ! Curse this blasted 
war, that robs one of everything worth 
having, that dulls every sense of decency 
and kills all feeling for beauty, destroys 
the joy of life, and mutilates one's dear- 
est friends. Curse it ! 

(A sound as of an express train is heard, 
followed by the roar of an explosion, 
while a dense cloud of smoke and dust 
rises immediately in view of the trench.) 

214 



A PASSING IN JUNE, 1915 



Portentous Voice. Prepare to face, 
eternity ! 

Cecil (clenching his fists). Beast, loath- 
some beast ! Don't think I am afraid of 
you. 

(The sounds are repeated as a second shell 
drops, rather nearer. A Shadow ap- 
pears round the dug-out, and hesitates.) 

Cecil (to the Shadow). Who is that ? 
Is that the Shadow of Fear ? 

A Thin, Quavering Voice. Yes, shall 
I come in ? 

Cecil (furiously). Out of my sights 
vile, cringing wretch ! Not even your 
shadow will I tolerate in my presence !'• 
(A third shell bursts nearer still.) 

Portentous Voice (thunderously). Sett 
not your affections on things below. 

(Cecil pauses in a listening attitude.) 

Cecil (more quietly, and with a new look 
in his eyes). 1 think I have forgotten; 
something, — something rather important, 

215 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



(Enter the twin Spirits of Honour and 
Duty, Spirits of a very noble and 
courtly mien.) 

Cecil (simply and humbly). Gentlemen, 
to my sorrow and loss I had forgotten 
you. You are doubly welcome. 

The Spirit of Duty. Young sir, we 
thank you. After all, it is but right 
that in this hour of danger and dismay 
we should be with you. 

The Spirit of Honour. I am so old 
a friend of you and yours, Cecil, that 
you may surely trust me. I was your 
father's friend. Side by side we stood 
in every crisis of his varied life. Together 
faced the Dervish rush at Abu Klea, and 
afterwards in India took our part in 
many a desperate unnamed frontier tussle. 
I helped him woo your mother, spoke for 
him when he put up for Parliament, ad- 
vised him when he visited the city. In 
fact, I was his companion all through 
life, and I stood beside his bed at death. 

216 



A PASSING IN JUNE, 1915 



The Spirit of Duty. I too may claim 
to have been as much your father's friend 
as was my brother. Indeed, where one 
is, the other is never far away. We do 
agree most wonderfully, and since our 
birth, no quarrel has ever disturbed the 
harmony of our ways. 

Cecil. Gentlemen, you have recalled 
me to myself. I had forgotten that I 
was no more a child. I wanted to dance 
in the sun with the flowers, and sing with 
the birds, to swim in the pool with yon- 
der newt, and lie down to dry in the long 
meadow grass among the poppies. Be- 
cause I might not do this and other 
things as fond and foolish, I was petulant 
and peevish, like a spoilt child. I look 
to you, gentlemen, to help me to be a 
man, and play a man's part in the world. 

Honour. We will remain at hand, 
call us when you need us, we shall not 
fail you. 
{The bombardment increases in intensity. 

217 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



Shrapnel bursts overhead. Shells with 
increasing rapidity and accuracy ex- 
plode both short and over the trench. 
The hail of bullets is continuous. An 
N.C.O. rushes by shouting " Stand 
to" ; men rush from the dug-outs and 
seize their rifles ; Cecil, like the 
others, grasps his rifle and sees that 
it is fully loaded.) 

(Curtain.) 

ACT IV. SUNSET 

Scene. The same, but the wall of sand- 
bags is broken in many places. The 
dead lie half buried beneath them, 
Cecil lies, badly wounded, against 
a gap in the wall, his rifle by his side. 
Honour and Duty kneel beside him 
tenderly. The last rays of the sun 
light up his painful smile. Thirst 
stands gloomily over him, and the 
wild flowers are peeping at him with 

218 



A PASSING IN JUNE, 1915 



sleepy eyes through the gap, while 
Mother Earth calls to them to go 
to bed. Father Sun leans sadly over 
the broken parapet. 



Cecil (slowly and with difficulty). Hon- 
our, Duty, I thank you. You did not 
fail me. 

Honour. You played the man, Cecil, 
as your father did before you. 

Duty. Your example it was that 
steadied your comrades, and kept craven 
fear at a distance. You saved the trench. 

Honour. This is the beauty of man- 
hood, to die for a good cause. There 
is no fairer thing in all God's world. 

Cecil. I thank you. Good night, 
Sun ; good night, Mother Earth. Think 
kindly of me. I don't think I was mad 
after all. 

Sun. Good night, brave lad. (To 
Mother Earth.) I can hardly bear to 
look on so sad a sight. 

219 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



Cecil. Good night, Ragged Robins ; 
good night, Poppies. You have played 
your game, and I mine. Only they are 
different because we are different. 

Chorus of Flowers. Good night, dear 
Cecil. We are so very sorry that you are 
hurt. 

(Enter the Master, flowers shyly follow- 
ing him. Honour and Duty raise 
Cecil gently to a standing position.) 

The Master {extending his arms with 
a loving smile). " Well done, good and 
faithful servant. Enter thou into the 
joy of thy Lord." 

(Cecil, with a look of wonder and joy, is 
borne forward.) 

(Curtain.) 



220 



MY HOME AND SCHOOL 

A Fragment of Autobiography 



XVI 
MY HOME AND SCHOOL 1 

I 
HOME 

What is one to say of home ? It is diffi- 
cult to know. I find that biographers 
are particular about the date of birth, the 
exact address of the babe, the social 
position and ancestry of the parent. I 
suppose that it is all that they can learn. 
But as an autobiographer I want to do 
something better ; to give a picture of the 
home where, as I can now see, ideals, tastes, 
prejudices and habits were formed which 
have persisted through all the internal 
revolutions that have since upheaved 
my being. 

I try to form the picture in my mind, 

1 "A Student" left a great deal] of manuscript, 
among which this fragment of autobiography is not 
the least interesting. 

223 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



and a crowd of detail rushes in which 
completely destroys its simplicity and 
harmony. How hard it is to judge, even 
at this distance, what are the salient fea- 
tures. I must try, but I know that from 
the point of view of psychological develop- 
ment I may easily miss out the very factors 
which were really most important. 

I remember a big house, in a row of 
other big houses, in a side street leading 
from the East Cliff at Brighton right up 
to the edge of the bare rolling downs. It 
was exactly like almost every other house 
in that part of Brighton — stucco fronted, 
with four stories and a basement, three 
windows in front on each of the upper 
stories, and two windows and a door on 
the ground floor and basement. At the 
back was a small garden, with flower beds 
surrounding a square of gravel, and a 
tricycle house in one corner. There was 
a back door in this garden, which gave 
on to a street of cottages. This back 

224 



MY HOME 



door was a point of strategic importance. 

But I need not describe the house in de- 
tail. It was exactly like thousands of other 
houses built in the beginning of the 
nineteenth century. High, respectable., 
ugly, and rather inconvenient, with many 
stairs, two or three big rooms, a lot of 
small ones, and no bathroom. It was 
essentially a family house, intended for 
people of moderate means and large 
families. Nowadays they build houses 
which are prettier, and have bathrooms ; 
but they are not meant for large families. 

We were a large family, and a fairly 
noisy one. Moreover, we were singularly 
self-sufficing. We hadn't many friends, 
we didn't entertain much, we had dinner 
in the middle of the day, and supper in the 
evening. 

There was my father who was a recluse, 

my mother who was essentially our 

mother, the two girls, and four boys. I 

was an afterthought, being seven years 

2 25 p 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



younger than my next brother, who for 
seven years had been called B. (for baby), 
and couldn't escape from it even after my 
appearance. 

In addition to these, B. and I both had 
inseparable friends, who lived within 
a stone's throw. Ronnie was my alter 
ego till I was fourteen : so much so that 
I had no other friend. Even now, 
though our ways have kept us apart, and 
our interests and opinions are funda- 
mentally different, we can sit in each 
other's rooms with perfect content. We 
know too much of each other for it to be 
possible to pretend to be what we are not. 
We sit and are ourselves, naked and un- 
ashamed so to speak, and it is very restful. 

Pictures float before my mind. Let me 
select a few. I see a rather fat, stolid 
little boy in a big airy nursery at the top 
of the house, sitting in the middle of the 
floor playing with bricks. Outside it is 
gusty and wet, and the small boy hopes 

226 



MY HOME 



that he will be allowed to stay in all the 
afternoon, and play with bricks. But that 
is not to be. A small thin man, with 
gentle grey eyes, short curly beard, an old 
black greatcoat and a black square felt 
hat, comes in. The child must have some 
air. The child is resentful, but resigned, 
is wrapped up well, put in his pram, and 
wheeled up and down the Madeira Road. 

" Pa " didn't appear very much except 
on some such errand ; but " Ma " was in 
and out all the time. " Ma " was every- 
thing, the only woman who has ever had 
my whole love, my whole trust, and has 
made my heart ache with the desire to 
show my love. 

A later picture. The boy is bigger, 
and not so fat. He no longer has a nurse. 
He has vacated the nursery, which is now 
tenanted by his big sisters. He has a little 
room all his own : a very small room, 
looking west. The south-west gales beat 
upon the window in the winter, and not so 

227 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



far away is the roar of the sea. It is good 
to curl up in a nice warm little bed, and 
listen to the howling of the wind and the 
waves. 

In the morning come lessons from his 
eldest sister Gertrude. The schoolroom 
has rings and a trapeze, a bookshelf full of 
boys' books, and cupboards full of stone 
bricks, cannon and soldiers. The boy's 
mind is set on bricks and soldiers. Les- 
sons and walks with " Ma " and his sisters 
or Ronnie and his nurse down the town 
are a nuisance. They interfere with the 
building of cathedrals and the settling of 
the destinies of nations by the arbitrament 
of war. 

It was a stolid, placid boy, intensely 
wrapt up in his cathedrals and his generals, 
intensely devoted to " Ma," and regard- 
ing all else as rather a nuisance. Ronnie 
he liked. He liked going to tea with 
him, and going walks with him and his 
nurse ; but they didn't have much in 

228 



MY HOME 



common except cricket. Ronnie had big 
soldiers which could not be knocked 
down by cannon balls, and which couldn't 
make history because they were few in 
number, and nearly all English. Mine 
were of every European power, and many 
Asiatic ones. They were diminutive and 
numerous, could take shelter in a forest 
of pine cones, and were admirably suited 
to be mown down at the cannon's mouth. 
The King of England was a person with 
a fine figure. He had one leg and one 
arm, and the plume of his dragoon's helmet 
was shorn off ; but his slight, erect figure 
still looked noble on a stately white pal- 
frey. The French armies were usually 
commanded by Marshal Petit, a gay fellow 
with his full complement of limbs, who 
sat a horse well. He had a younger 
brother almost equally distinguished. I 
have no recollection of a King of France. 
He must have been a poor fellow. The 
Sultan of Turkey, the Khedive, and Li 

229 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



Hung Chang still live in my memory as 
persons of distinction ; but I have no 
personal recollection of the Tsar, or the 
Emperors of Germany or Austria, or of 
the King of Italy, though I know they 
existed. 

Into this placid existence turmoil would 
enter three times a year. The elder 
brothers, Hugh, Tommy, and B., would 
come home for the holidays from Sand- 
hurst and Rugby, and R. would appear, 
and become almost one of the family. 
Then would occur troublous times, with 
a few advantages and many disadvant- 
ages. 

" Tommy " was a curiously solitary 
youth as I remember him, who played 
the 'cello with great perseverance and 
considerable success. At soldiers he was 
something of a genius, though his games 
were of an intricacy which failed to 
commend itself to me altogether. In 
his great soldier days he not only made 

230 



MY HOME 



history, but wrote it — a height to which 
I never attained. 

In the holidays cricket in the back 
garden became a great feature, and Tommy 
was a demon bowler. I fancy, too, that 
the very elaborate but highly satisfactory 
form of the game must have originated 
with him. In the back garden we not 
merely played cricket, but made history — 
cricket history. Two county sides were 
written out, and we batted alternately 
for the various cricketers, doing our best 
to imitate their styles. We bowled also 
in a rough imitation of the styles of the 
county bowlers whom we represented. 
This arrangement secured us against per- 
sonal rivalry, kept up a tremendous 
interest in first-class cricket, and enabled 
matches to continue, if necessary, for 
weeks at a time. It encouraged, too, a fair, 
impersonal, and unprejudiced view of 
outside events. 

In cricket, war, and music we undoubt- 

231 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



edly benefited by the holidays, specially 
in the summer, when we used to go to the 
country, often occupying a school-house 
with gym, cricket nets and a fair-sized 
garden. Ecclesiastical architecture suf- 
fered, however. . . . 

Hugh was a great and glorious person, 
a towering beneficent despot when he did 
appear. ... As for me I adored him 
with whole-hearted hero-worship. He was 
the " protector of the poor," who kept the 
rest of us in order. He was a magnificent 
person who revolutionized the art of war 
by the introduction of explosives. He was 
a tremendous walker, and first taught 
me to love great tramps over the downs, to 
sniff appreciatively the glorious air, and 
to love their bare, storm-swept outlines. 
Hugh stood for all that is wholesome, 
strenuous, out of doors in my life. With- 
out him I should have been a mere seden- 
tary. Among other things he was an 
enthusiastic boxer and gymnast. For 

232 



MY HOME 



these pursuits I sturdily feigned enthu- 
siasm and suppressed timidity. 

A few more pictures. First, Sunday 
morning. Gertrude goes off to Sunday 
School. She likes teaching and bossing. 
Hilda and Hugh, who are greater pals than 
brother and sister can often be, go off to 
St. James', where there will be good music 
and an interesting sermon. Tommy goes 
to St. Mark's, a good Protestant place, or 
to the beach, where curious and recondite 
doctrines are weekly disputed. B. goes to 
St. George's, protesting. There is plenty 
of room for his hat, there is a congenially 
aggressive spirit against Rome, and it 
slightly irritates Ma. Pa is not up yet. 
Ma and I go to All Souls', because it is the 
nearest poor church, and Ma finds it 
easier to worship where there are no pew 
rents, and the seats are uncushioned, 
and there are few rich people. I am ever 
loyal to Ma. 

I often wonder whether the reason why 

233 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



my family are all Churchgoers now is not 
that at that time we could choose our 
church. 

The next picture is Sunday night. 
" Pa " and I, and perhaps some of the 
other boys, set out for St. Paul's, at the 
other end of the town. Then, after the 
service, follows an immense walk all 
through the slums of the town. We talk 
of Australia, where Pa once had a sheep 
run; of theology, of the past and the future. 
This weekly walk is something of a privi- 
lege, and rather solemn. It makes me feel 
older. 

It is spring. I am at Rugby, and in 
the " San " with ophthalmia. The South 
African War is raging. Hugh is there. 
I am told that Hugh is dead. Pie has 
been shot in a glorious but futile charge 
at Paardeburg. I can't realize it. I 
am an object of interest, of envy almost, 
to the whole school. The flag is half- 
mast because my brother is dead. 

234 



MY HOME 



Every one is kind, touched. I put on an 
air as of a martyr. 

I get a heartbroken letter from my 
mother. Will I come home ? Or hadn't 
I better go to Uncle Jack's ? If I go 
home we shall make each other worse. 
It is better for me than for Maurice, who 
is with the fleet in the Mediterranean 
with no one to comfort him. 

Ma has had a great shock. She feels it 
desperately. She thinks all the others feel 
it as much. Except Hilda, we don't. 
There is a huge piece taken out of Ma's 
life and Hilda's life, because they were so 
unselfishly devoted to Hugh. Pa, also, 
has lost much, but he is a philosopher. 

I go to Uncle Jack's and shoot rabbits. 
The holidays come and go. Tommy is at 
Oxford ; I am at Rugby. Pa is immersed 
in theological speculation about the next 
world; B. is in the Mediterranean. Ma 
sends Gertrude and Hilda away for a long 
change. They go, and come back. Some- 

235 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



thing about Ma frightens them. She and 
Pa come near Rugby and stay with Uncle 
Jack. The holidays come. I learn that for 
the first time for about twenty years Ma 
is to go away without Pa. I am to meet 
her at Hereford, and we are to go to Wales. 
Ma forgets things. She is more loving 
than ever, but her memory is going. We 
go to communion together in the little 
village church. 

A few weeks later. We are back in 
Brighton. An Australian uncle and 
family are staying with us. Ma is ill in 
bed. I get up at 6 a.m., tramp over the 
downs and in a place I wot of, some five 
miles away, I gather heather for Ma. I 
run. I get back by 8.30. I find my 
uncle and cousins getting into a cab. 
Some one says, '•' How lovely ! Are these 
for me ? " I grip them in despair. They 
are for Ma. " Quite right," says some 
one. A day or two later my heather 
was placed, still blooming, on Ma's grave. 

236 



MY HOME 



I was sixteen then. Six years later I 
return home from abroad. Within a few 
weeks of my return I am sitting in Pa's 
room in agony, listening to him fight for 
breath. The fight at last weakens. I 
hear him whisper, " Help ! help ! " I set 
my teeth. The others come in. There 
is silence. All is over. I am given my 
father's ring. It is my most treasured 
possession. 

Henceforth all I have left of home is 
Hilda, for she alone is unmarried. Ever 
since my mother's death she has been my 
confidante. As far as was possible she 
has taken Ma's place in my life, and I 
have taken Hugh's place in hers. We 
are substitutes. For that reason as we 
get older we get to know each other better, 
and to know better how much we can 
give to each other. There is more criti- 
cism between us than there would have 
been between Ma and me, and Hilda and 
Hugh. But it has its advantages. We 

237 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



live apart, but we correspond weekly, 
and holiday together. It is all that is 
left of home, and it is infinitely pre- 
cious. 

Now that I have written these pages I 
can see as I have never seen before how 
much the child was father of the man. 
Since those home days I have had more 
variety of experience perhaps than falls 
to the lot of most men, and I would almost 
say more varied and more epoch-making 
friendships. Yet in these pages that I 
have written I seem to see all the essential 
and salient features of my character 
already mirrored and formed. 

I am still by nature lethargic and placid. 
I could still occupy myself contentedly 
with bricks and soldiers, art and history, 
and trouble no one. But there is still 
that other element, instilled by Hugh— a 
love of the open air, of struggle with the 
elements, in lonely desert places. 

I have never lost the craving for true 

238 



MY HOME 



religion, which induced my mother to go to 
a poor church to worship, and to visit 
the drunken and helpless in their slums. 
I have never lost the desire for her 
singleness of mind, and simple loyalty to 
Christ and His Church. At the same time 
I have never lost my father's inquiring- 
spirit, broad view, love of doctrine tem- 
pered by reason, and founded on history 
and tested by human experience. When 
these two beloved ones passed from this 
world I learnt the meaning of the text, 
" Where your treasure is, there will your 
heart be also." My heart has never been 
wholly in this world. 

So, too, I have always been a man of few 
friends. Ronnie has had many succes- 
sors ; but seldom more than one at a time. 
I have never cared much for society. 
My father and mother neither of them 
attached much importance to conven- 
tions, or to the fictitious values which 
society puts on clothes or money or posi- 

239 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



tion. I have always looked rather for 
some one to admire, some one whose ideals 
and personality were congenial, whatever 
their position or occupation. I have also, 
on the whole, always preferred comfort to 
show, simple to elaborate living. This 
I trace to the simple comfort and natural- 
ness of my old home. 



240 



II 

SCHOOL 

I went to a day school kept by Ronnie's 
father when I was nine. At least, it was 
a day school for me ; but nearly all the 
boys were boarders. I worked fairly 
hard, and got prizes. I 'was fairly good 
at cricket, and not much good at football. 
I had only one friend — Ronnie — and 
about two enemies, both of whom were 
day boys, and whom I should have liked 
to have fought if I had dared. My 
memories of the school are few. I best 
remember leaving home, and going back, 
and also playing cricket. Ronnie's father 
lives as a just and straightforward gentle- 
man, who never caned a boy except for what 
was mean or dirty, and whom we all loved 
and respected. But then I have known 

241 Q 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



and loved him and his wife all my life. 
If our house was a second home to Ronnie, 
theirs has always been a second home to 
me. 

There was one master whom I liked, and 
who perhaps did something to develop 
my character. He was fond of poetry 
and history, and from him I learnt — 
an easy lesson for me — to love history ; 
but what is more, he first gave me a glim- 
mering idea, which was to develop long 
after, that the classics are literature, and 
not torture. 

I left there to go to Rugby. 

Never did a boy enter Rugby with 
better chances. The memory of my three 
brothers still lived in the house. They had 
all achieved distinction in games, and 
been leading prefects (or sixths as they 
are called at Rugby) in the house. Many 
masters remembered them for good, 
particularly Jacky, the housemaster, who 
had loved them all, especially Hugh. 

242 



SCHOOL 

In addition to this, one of the leading 
fellows in the house, who was afterwards 
to be captain of the school fifteen and 
cricket eleven, lieutenant in the corps, 
and one of the racquet pair, had been at 
my private school. I shared a study 
with another fellow who had been at my 
private school. Two boys accompanied 
me from there, one of whom was my next 
best friend to Ronnie. His parents were 
in India, and he had spent some of his 
holidays with Ronnie and me. 

But though I loved Rugby and was 
happy there, I can't say I was a success. 
I made few friends, who have since, with 
one exception, drifted out of my life. I 
was too timid to enjoy Rugger. I never 
achieved distinction at cricket. I got 
into the sixth my last term, but hadn't 
the force of character to enjoy the prefec- 
tural powers which that fact conferred 
upon me. The fact is that I left when I 
was 16, and it is between 16 and 18 that 

243 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



the full enjoyment of school life comes 
and boys reap the harvest they have sown. 
Had I stayed another year I should have 
belonged to the leading generation, 
strengthened my friendships, and developed 
what was latent in my character. As it 
was, I left at an unfortunate age. I was 
pushed into the sixth a year before my 
contemporaries. My friendships were only 
half formed, and I had only just begun 
to feel strength of body and mind 
developing in me. 

As a junior I was too conscientious, 
and not light-hearted enough. I hardly 
had any adventures at Rugby, because 
I had an incurable instinct for keeping 
rules. I worked hard at mathematics 
and French, and my report generally read, 
" Good ability. Might exert himself 
more." At classics and chemistry I did 
as little work as possible, and any report 
generally read, " Hard-working but not 
bright." 

244 



SCHOOL 

On the whole I think I was pretty 
happy at Rugby ; but I never look back 
to my school days as the happiest part 
of my life. I have had many happier 
times since. But still, my house was a 
good one. Jacky, the housemaster, was 
wonderfully kind and wise. He hardly 
ever interfered with the affairs of the house, 
but left it all — in appearance — to the 
" Sixths." Actually, nothing escaped 
him. The tone of the house was on the 
whole extraordinarily clean and whole- 
some, and the fellows who had dirty 
minds were a small minority, and easily 
avoided. At all events, very little of that 
sort of thing reached me. 

At sixteen and a half I went to the Royal 
Military Academy at Woolwich, commonly 
known as " the Shop." There I spent the 
two most miserable years of my life, and 
made the second of my great friendships. In 
these days the Shop was still a pretty 
rough place, and at the moment it was 
245 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



unusually full. I think there were over 
300 fellows there altogether, and there 
were about 70 in my term. My first 
experience was unfortunate. I was inter- 
viewing the Adjutant, a keen sportsman 
and a bit of a tartar. He eyed me un- 
favourably, asked what games I could 
play, and when I replied that I had no 
great proficiency in any he commented, 
" Humph, a good-for-nothing ! " and dis- 
missed me. 

I am by nature slow, stolid and clumsy. 
I was bad at being " smart " ; I was slow 
and clumsy at drill; map making and 
geometrical drawing were physical impos- 
sibilities to me ; I was incredibly slow 
and stupid at machinery, mechanism, and 
electricity. The only subject which 
interested me was military history. In 
my first term I dropped from about forty- 
fourth to about seventieth in my class, 
and I kept near the bottom until my 
fourth term, when I failed in my electricity 

246 



SCHOOL 

exam., and had to stay one term more. 
In the same term I received a prize for the 
best essay on the lessons of the South 
African War. 

Oh, the misery of those terms at Wool- 
wich ! I hated the work, the drill, the 
gym, and even the riding school. I hated 
the officers, and above all I hated the spirit 
of the place. As far as I remember, the 
one eternal topic of conversation and 
subject of " wit" was the sexual relation. 
Of course the boys had never been taught 
sensibly anything about it. Consequently 
the place was continually circulated with 
filthy books, pictures, stories, etc. When 
I went there I was extraordinarily inno- 
cent, and devoid of curiosity. I had 
been recently the more disposed to purity 
through the death of my mother. At 
Woolwich I remained extraordinarily inno- 
cent and uncurious, letting the poisonous 
stream flow continually by me, shrinking 
from its stench, and finding more and more 
247 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



relief in my own company. I must have 
been a very unpleasant person at that 
time. 

One friend I had. He was a small, 
compact, keen, and capable little Rugbe- 

ian named F . He was like me in 

that he had recently lost his parents, 
and was interested in religion and philo- 
sophy in a boyish way. Unlike me he 
rather enjoyed Woolwich. He had a lot 
of friends, was keen on riding and on a 
good deal of the work, and generally 
speaking plunged into life, taking the 
rough with the smooth, and both in good 
part. 

Although we have drifted far apart in 
ideals and sympathies, I shall never cease 

to be grateful for all that F did 

for me in those days. He routed me 
out when I was in the blues, laughed 
at me, cheered me up, and made me 
look at life with new eyes. Moreover 
he did this, as I know, in defiance of 
243 



SCHOOL 

the set with whom he was friendly, who 
despised me for a milksop, and were at 
no pains to conceal the fact. But for 

F , my life at the Shop would have 

been intolerable. 

Besides him, I had a few associates, 
boys with whom I naturally associated 
for the simple reason that they, too, were 
left out of the main current of the life of 
the place. But they were not particularly 
congenial. One or two were hard workers. 
One was a great slacker, and more timid, 
physically and morally, than even I. He 
was a boy with a fatal facility for doing 
useless things moderately well, especially 
in the musical line. He was even more 
frightened of gym and horses than I was, 
and unlike me was not ashamed to show 
it. If the Shop was purgatory to me, 
it must have been hell to him. 

My happiest times were week-ends 
spent at home. I used to arrive on Satur- 
day evening and leave on Sunday evening. 

249 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



About now I began to get to know my 
father much better, and to develop my 
theological bent under his advice. In 
my disillusionment as to my capacity 
for military life I began to wish I had 
chosen the clerical profession. I think 
my father had the shrewdness to see that 
failure in one profession was not neces- 
sarily the sign of a " call " in another 
direction. Anyway, he did not discourage 
me ; but spoke of five years in the Army 
as the best training for a parson. 

I remember avowing my intention of 
becoming a parson to one of my more 
friendly acquaintances at the Shop, and 
he replied that I wouldn't set the Thames 
on fire, because I had such a monotonous 
voice. 

In spite of seeking relief from my 
uncongenial surroundings in religion and 
theology, I did not join myself to any one 
else. There was a so-called " Pi Squad," 
or Bible class, held weekly, but I only 

250 



SCHOOL 

went once, and didn't like it. I was 
always peculiarly sensitive about priggish- 
ness in those who professed themselves 
to be religious openly, and generally 
thought I detected priggishness in any 
" Bible circle " or similar institution that 
I came across. I think my theology mainly 
consisted in speculations about the future 
state — I remember I emphatically de- 
clined to believe in hell — and my religion 
consisted mainly in fairly regular attend- 
ance at Matins and Communion. 

Another effect of the intensity with 
which I hated my surroundings was that 
I read a lot of good novels — George Eliot, 
the Brontes, Scott, Dickens, Jane Austen, 
Thackeray, Besant, etc. A book which 
I read over and over again was Arthur 
Benson's Hill of Trouble, and other Stories. 
Those legends, with their imaginative 
setting, charm of language, and beautiful 
religious ideas were more restful to my 
unquiet spirit than anything else I read 

251 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



The actual conditions of life at the 
Shop were pretty barbaric. The aim was 
to make it as much like barracks as pos- 
sible. Each term was housed in a dif- 
ferent side of the square of buildings 
which form the Academy, and the fourth 
term were spread among the houses of 
the other terms as corporals. My first 
term I shared a room with three other 
fellows. I think it was the ugliest room I 
have ever lived in, without exception. It 
had high whitewashed brick walls. In each 
corner was a bed which folded up against 
the wall in the day time, and was con- 
cealed by a square of print curtains. 
There was a deal table, four Windsor chairs, 
a shelf with four basins, and a cupboard 
with four lockers. All the woodwork 
was painted khaki. The contrast with the 
little study at Rugby, with its diamond- 
paned window, its matchboard panelling 
surmounted by a paper of one's own choos- 
ing, its ledge for photos and ornaments 

252 



SCHOOL 

(" bim ledge " so called), its eggshell-blue 
cupboards, baize curtains, and window box, 
was striking. 

It used to be the custom to go to and 
from the bathroom attired in a sponge, in 
connexion with which an amusing incident 
once happened. 

A cadet in his second year was on the 
bathroom landing, when he perceived 
that the mother and sisters of another 
cadet were coming upstairs. From sounds 
in the bathroom he realized that they 
would meet a naked corporal just as they 
reached the landing. The door of the 
bathroom opened outwards, and with 
admirable presence of mind he rushed 
back, and putting his back against the 
door and his feet against the wall, im- 
prisoned the corporal. The corporal, in 
the approved Shop version of Billingsgate, 
began to blaspheme at the top of his voice, 
so when the ladies reached the top of the 
stairs they saw a vision of a cadet with 

253 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



his feet to the wall and his back to a door 
singing at the top of his voice to drown a 
commotion within ! 

On another occasion in my second year, 
when I was sharing a room with one other 
fellow, I had a sister to tea. On arriving 
in my room I found that my stablemate 
had been playing hockey, and was at the 
moment in the bathroom, having thought- 
lessly left all his clothes in the room — 
mostly on the floor. . 

On the last day of my first term the 
corporals and officers were all absent at a 
farewell dinner to the former, and we 
received information that the third term 
were going to raid our house, with a view 
to " toshing " us in a cold bath. We 
therefore prepared for action. Every 
receptacle which would hold water was 
taken to the upper landing, full. Then 
all the chairs in the house were roped to- 
gether, and placed on the stairs as an 
obstacle. The defenders then took up 

254 



SCHOOL 

their position at the windows and at the 
top of the stairs. In due course the 
enemy's forces arrived, and stormed the 
stairs, under a heavy fire of water. The 
obstacle was at length destroyed, and a 
solid phalanx of wet bodies swarmed up 
the stairs. We formed a similar phalanx 
and charged to meet them. I happened 
to be first, and much to my discomfiture 
the enemy's phalanx parted in the middle, 
and I was rapidly passed down the stairs 
— a prisoner ! Fortunately at the bottom 
I found a relieving party from the next 
house, making a diversion on the enemy's 
rear. With great valour we dragged 
down a foe, and toshed him in the bath 
that had been made ready for us. " The 
tosher toshed ! " 

The next day we surveyed the damage. 
All the chairs and banisters were broken, 
the whitewash was rubbed off the bricks 
by wet shoulders, and nearly all the 
basins were broken. That day was the 

255 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



day of Lord Roberts's half-yearly inspec- 
tion ! 

There was not such another battle until 
my third term, when we were the aggres- 
sors. This time the damage was even 
greater, for the defenders let down tables 
across the stairs as an obstacle, and we 
battered our way through with scaffolding 
poles. There were some casualties that 
day, owing to an indiscriminate use of mop 
handles. 

On the day of Lord Roberts's inspection 
we had to change from parade dress to 
gym dress, and it was during the change 
that Lord Roberts inspected our quarters. 
He went into one room and found a fellow 
just half-way through his change — with 
nothing at all on ! The room was called 
to attention, and with great presence of 
mind the boy dashed into the bed curtains 
and stood to attention there, while Lord 
Roberts had an animated conversation 
with him ! 

256 



SCHOOL 

There were jolly moments in the life at 
the Shop. On Saturdays, after dinner, the 
unfortunates who had not got away for 
the week-end used to have " stodges " 
after dinner. Having put away a sub- 
stantial dinner, we changed into flannels, 
and used to crowd into some one's room, 
and eat muffins and smoke cigars. I re- 
member one night there were eighteen of 
us in one small room. 

In order to go away for a week-end one 
had to obtain (1) an invitation, (2) per- 
mission from parent or guardian to accept 
the invitation. One week my brother, 
who was working at the Admiralty, offered 

his flat to myself and F , as he was 

going to Brighton himself. F 

wrote to his guardian — a Scotsman — for 
permission to stay with Captain Hankey. 
The guardian wrote back for more informa- 
tion. He saw by the Army List that Cap- 
tain Hankey existed, but who were the 
Hankey s ? etc., etc. F wrote back 

257 R 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



a furious letter, saying that he expected to 
have his friends accepted without ques- 
tion, and received the permission. We 
went. The awkward thing was that Cap- 
tain Hankey was not there, and we shud- 
dered to think of the rage of F 's 

guardian if he should find out. Worse 
still, the guardian was supposed to be 
staying at the Oriental Club in Hanover 
Square, and my brother's flat was in 
Oxford Street ! However, we didn't meet. 
F — — and I neither of us knew Lon- 
don, and had the time of our lives. We 
dined at Frascati's — a palace of splendour 
in our eyes — and went to His Majesty's to 
see Beerbohm Tree in Ulysses. When it came 
to Hades, we held each other's hands ! On 
Sunday we went to St. Peter's, Vere Street, 
but were so furious at being kept waiting 
for pew holders long after service had 
commenced, that we went on to the Audley 
Street Chapel, a most queer little place. 
It was full of monuments to the dependents 

258 



SCHOOL 

of peers, in which the peers figured very 
largely and the dependents fared humbly 
— the epitome of flunkey dom. Among 
these tablets was one inscribed — 

" To John Wilkes, 
Friend of Liberty." 

Truly refreshing ! 

We finished the day at some old friends 
of mine, and voted the week-end a huge 
success. 

When I went to Woolwich I was just 
on the verge of getting keen on games 
and beginning to feel self-confident, and 
to enjoy the fellowship of my comrades. 
Woolwich nipped this in the bud. I left 
with no self-confidence, having renounced 
games, and with a sense of solitariness 
among my comrades. I was a misan- 
thrope, and the unhappiest sort of egotist 
— the kind that dislikes himself. To say 
the truth, too, I was then, and always 
have been, a bit of a funk, physically, 
which didn't make me happier. On the 

259 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



other hand, I was an omnivorous reader of 
everything which did not concern my pro- 
fession, and a dabbler in military history. 

I have sometimes thought that I was 
unconsciously a bit of a hero at Woolwich, 
standing out for purity and religion in an 
atmosphere of filth and blasphemy. I have 
come to the conclusion, however, that 
there was nothing in this. As to the general 
atmosphere, there is no doubt that it was 
singularly pernicious ; even the officers 
and instructors contributed their quota 
of filthy jokes, and there was no religious 
instruction or influence at all except the 
parade service at the garrison church on 
Sunday, if one happened not to be on 
leave. But as to my heroism I am reluc- 
tantly compelled to be sceptical. I went 
as far as I felt my inclination, and stopped 
after a time because instinct was too strong 
the other way. 

As I have said before, I have always 
had an insurmountable instinct for 

260 



SCHOOL 

keeping rules. At school I could never 
bring myself to transgress, although I 
knew that transgression was the road 
to adventure. So at the Shop, how- 
ever much I may have wished to be in 
the swim, my instinct for the moral 
and religious code of home was too strong 
for me. It required no self-control to 
prevent myself from slipping into blas- 
phemy and filth. On the contrary, in 
order to do so I should have had to violate 
my strongest instincts, and exercised a 
will to evil much stronger than any will 
power that I possessed at that time. 
If, when I left Woolwich, I was compara- 
tively pure, it was because nature did not 
allow me to be anything else. 

To say the truth, I have never felt the 
sway of passions to anything like the same 
extent as most men seem to. I have never 
cared for the society of women for its 
sexual attraction. Consequently all my 
women friends have been just the same 

261 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



to me as my men friends — friends whom 
I could talk to about the things that 
interested me. 

I don't boast of this, I only state the 
fact. I am not proud of it because I know 
that some passion is necessary to make 
heroes and even saints. 



262 



NOTES ON THE FRAGMENT OF 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY BY "HILDA." 

I have before me as I write a pencil sketch., 
limned with considerable care, of a rather 
disagreeable-looking young man, and be- 
neath it is written — 

" D. W. A. II., by Himself." 

It is a profile. The eye has almost dis- 
appeared under the brow, the mouth is 
tightly closed to a degree that is quite un- 
pleasant, and there is a deliberate exag- 
geration of a slight defect he actually had 
— a tendency for the lower jaw to protrude 
a little. This little defect hardly any of 
his friends seem to have noticed, for most 
of them execrate it as a libel in the other- 
wise admittedly beautiful photograph at 
the beginning of this volume. The ex- 
pression in the sketch is above all — 
dubious. 

So did Donald see himself. 

For the rest of us, no doubt, the lessons 
Mr. Haselden has for us in his caricatures, 

263 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



" ourselves as we see ourselves " and " as 
others see us," are necessary. But not for 
Donald. The drawing is pasted into an 
album which contains mainly Oxford 
College groups, and there is a certain un- 
pleasant resemblance between it and his 
full face presentment in one of the groups 
— in which he has " the group expression " 
rather badly. Assuming it to have been 
drawn at Oxford, or not very long after he 
left, I think it must belong very nearly to a 
time when he was going off abroad on one 
of his long trips, and I had the sympathy 
of a dear old lady friend of ours on having 
to part with him. I remember replying, 
" Yes, it always seems as if peace and 
happiness, truth and justice, religion and 
piety went with him each time he goes ! " 
She laughed a good deal, and then said, 
seriously, repeating over to herself the 
stately mounting sixteenth century 
phrases, " But it's quite true, you know ! " 
I hardly think, though, that I should have 
said it of the young man in the sketch ! 

I am now going to make a comment or 
two on my brother's word-pictures as 
I should if he were by my side. But 
first I should like his readers to know 

264 



NOTES 

and realize that both were written before 
the period of what I may call Donald's 
" Renaissance," a period that can be 
roughly marked by the publication of his 
first book, The Lord of all Good Life. 

Up to then he had been struggling in vain 
for self-expression. How he had worked the 
amount of MSS. he has left alone proves — 
for we have it on a friend's testimony that 
" he tore up much of what he wrote " ; 
and he also had experienced and suffered, 
violating his natural " timidity " and his, 
in some ways, precarious health, for he had 
never got over certain weaknesses en- 
gendered by his illness in Mauritius — in his 
struggle to get a true basis for a solution of 
the meaning of life and of religion. What 
cost him most was the knowledge that he 
was frequently doubted and misunder- 
stood by many of those whose approbation 
would have been very dear to him. This 
is proved by his constantly expressed 
gratitude to the one or two who never 
doubted him for one moment. 

With the writing of this book, as we 
know, all his difficulties began to clear 
away, and at the same time he began to 
reap the harvest of love and admiration 

265 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



that he had sown in his toils to produce it. 
And the result was he opened out like a 
flower to the sun ! No one can doubt this 
for a moment who has read his book of 
a year later, The Student in Arms, and 
rejoiced in the radiant happiness of its 
inspiration. 

He had more than once said to me dur- 
ing the past two years, " You know it 
makes a tremendous difference to me when 
people really like me." No longer was it 
a case of " one friend at a time." ° The 
period for that was over and done with. 
He had come into his own. lie was 
ready for a universal brotherhood, and no 
hand would ever be held out to him in 
vain. 

It is impossible to believe that he 
does not now know of and appreciate 
all the beautiful tributes that have come 
to him since his "passing" — from the 
perfect wreath of immortelles weaved by 
Mr. Strachey to the sweet pansy of 
thought dropped by a little fellow V.A.D. 
of mine who said beautifully and courage- 
ously — though knowing him solely through 
his book — " We feel since he gave us his 
thoughts that he belongs a tiny bit to 

266 



NOTES 

us, too," thus voicing the feeling of many. 

I believe the paper entitled "Home " to 
have been written at Oxford, and " School " 
not so very long after. In any case, I have 
definite proof of their both belonging to 
Donald's pre-" Renaissance " period, for 

the friendship with F , his friend 

at " the Shop," from whom he speaks 
of having drifted apart somewhat, was 
renewed with fresh vigour in 1914, and 
has burned brightly ever since. Only last 

July was I sent by him a letter of F 's 

from the trenches, with the injunction, 
" Please put this among my treasures," 
and there is an allusion to a story told 
in this letter in the article entitled 
" Romance " of the present volume. 

To return to " Home," I question whether 
the love and devotion of " Hilda " and "Ma " 
for Hugh was so entirely unselfish. For my 
mother I fully believe, as for " Hilda," Hugh 
was the epitome of all that was fine, 
splendid and joyous in life. He was the 
glorious knight, the " preux chevalier " 
" sans peur et sans reproche," who rode 
forth at dawn with clean sword and shin- 
ing armour, and all the world before him, 
yet keeping his heart for ever in his home. 

287 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



He was the child of her youth as Donald 
was the child of her maturity. Deep 
down in her wonderfully varied nature 
there were certain bottomless springs of 
courage, daring and enterprise which she 
herself had little chance of expressing, 
and of which Hugh alone was the personi- 
fication. 

As long as I can remember Hugh had 
been my ideal and made all the interest and 
joy of life for me. Whether he were at home 
or abroad I never had a thought I did not 
share with him. When he died, the best 
part of me died too, or was paralysed 
rather, and Heaven knows what sort of a 
" substitute " I should have been for 
" Ma," to Donald, had not the baby 
Hugh come, just in time, with healing in 
his wings to restore life to the best part 
of me. 

I am glad to think that Donald's 
" Autobiography " was written before 
1914, for I know that even before that I 
was becoming more to him than a " sub- 
stitute." I too have my memories and 
pictures. 

It is May, 1915. I am in the country- 
house — cleaning is going on at home. 

268 



NOTES 

I get a letter to say that the Rifle 
Brigade may leave for France at any 
time, and that Donald may get some 
" leave " on Saturday or Sunday. 

I make a dash for town. 

There I find a telegram of reckless and 
unconscionable length, running into two 
pages. He cannot come up — they may 
leave at any moment. It seems hardly 
worth while my bothering to come to 
Aldershot on the chance — he may be 
unable to leave barracks. 

I write a return telegram, also of reck- 
less and unconscionable length, and reply 
paid — it is a relief to do so — asking for a 
place of meeting at Aldershot to be sug- 
gested. 

I get no answer at all, and on Sunday 
morning, in despair, I go over to see my 
aunt and cousin. My aunt is my mother's 
sister and a sportswoman. She counsels, 
" Go at all costs." Dorothy will come with 
me: Dorothy is Donald's best woman 
pal — she reminds him of his mother. She 
is all that is wholesome and comfortable. 

The element of enjoyment comes in, and 
I go home and pack a nice lunch. 

We arrive at Aldershot. 

269 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



There is no one on the platform to meet 
us, and we push our way through the turn- 
stile. 

There is Donald, on the outskirts of the 
waiting crowd — a tall, soldierly figure in 
the uniform of a private, for he has 
resigned his sergeant's stripes by now. 

Xiis face is very boyish — not the face of 
the photograph at the beginning of this 
book : that was taken after he had been 
to France, and had been wounded, and had 
written " A Passing in June," and " The 
Honour of the Brigade " — but a much 
younger face, really boyish. 

He glances quickly and anxiously at 
every face that passes, and each time he 
is a little more disappointed, but he tries 
not to show it. 

I am not tall and cannot catch his eye. 
It is like being at a play, watching him. 
All at once he sees me. Involuntarily a 
sudden quick spasm of joy passes across 
his face, absolutely transfiguring it. 

He smoothes it away quickly, for he is a 
Briton and does not like to show his feel- 
ings, but he has given himself away ! 

Dorothy and I shall never forget that 
look. And it was for me — at first he does 

270 



NOTES 

not see Dorothy. When he does it is an 
added pleasure. 

With two ladies to escort he assumes 
a lordly air. 

He has thought of everything. We 
would like some tea ? Yes, all the bis 
places are shut as it is Sunday, but he 
has marked down a little place on his way 
to the station. 

It is a lovely day, and we are very 
happy. 

The girl who waits upon us at the little 
tea place, likes us, and so do the other 
Tommies and their friends who are having 
tea there. 

We sit at little tables, but at very close 
quarters with each other, and we smile at 
them and they at us. 

I have brought Donald some letters, 
which pleases him, and Dorothy has 
brought him some splendid socks, knitted 
by herself. 

After tea we walk across an arid plain 
to a little wood, and sit down under 
the trees. Donald changes to the new 
socks — those he had on were wringing 
wet. 

He picks us little bunches of violets, 

i 271 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



hyacinths and wild strawberry flowers — 
we have them still. 

We are very happy the whole of the day, 
and have my sandwiches and cake and 
fruit for supper, there under the trees. 
And here in thought let me leave " The 
Student in Arms," who was to me part 
son, best pal, brother, comrade, and coun- 
sellor on all subjects and more than a 
little bit of grandpapa ! 

He could be so many different things 
because, as another friend and cousin 
said, " he seemed to know everything 
about everybody." 

I like to think of those two fine spirits 
— Eugh and Donald — each with a hand 
to the tiny baby nephew, and a word of 
greeting for me when I go over the top. 



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